


unfinished/abandoned works

by themikeymonster



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:58:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themikeymonster/pseuds/themikeymonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a dumping ground for stories that are unlikely to be completed but I love too much to leave languishing on my hard drive. Pairing and Trope in chapter title, appropriate warning/summaries for each story to be found in note section.</p><p>Mostly WinterIron, Tony-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Apocolypse AU B/T

**Author's Note:**

> After the events of CA:TWS, things go more wrong than they'd thought possible. In a Post-SHIELD world, Tony's on the run with barely more than a laptop for support (no Pepper, no JARVIS, no Iron Man) - well, and Captain America's amnesiac best friend. 
> 
> WARNINGS for attempted suicide, suicidal people giving other suicidal people bad life advice, Tony's PoV which is always full of fun things, Steve being made out as an abusive jerk because Steve lacks the tools to set appropriate boundaries and Tony being incapable of forming healthy relationships with people

* * *

 

So. Tony had no idea what Natasha and Steve meant to do when they blew SHEILD sky-high, but he was going to beat them both over the head with a rolled up newspaper and inform them of what incredibly dumb attack dogs they were. He'd really expected better of Natasha. (He thinks: _I have been emotionally compromised._ )

HYDRA had not been solely wrapped up into SHEILD, after all. Cut off one head, and two grow back. In the immediate wake of their cover being blown, HYDRA had gone on the offensive. Seventy years to recover, seventy years to get their fingers into all kinds of pies. Apparently, after the Avengers thwarted their attempt to nuke Manhattan, HYDRA had gotten tired of skirmishes and decided to pull out the big guns. The end result was - less than ideal.

It was pure luck that Tony had managed to get away as scot-free as he had. As a matter of fact, if he hadn't had previous experience with low-tech sabotage and running desperately away, he might not have survived at all. He could only keep his fingers crossed that JARVIS was keeping Pepper safe, that Rhodey had gotten his desperate message and hadn't tried to take on HYDRA-tech without some kind of real plan.

He thought longingly of the days back when he didn't have to worry quite so much about Rhodey now that he had War Machine. How long ago had that been? When he'd first designed it? Madness. Rhodey was a smart guy and less prone to stupid superhero antics than some of the others - nearly Bruce-like in his pragmatics, which was saying something, considering Bruce had to control his Other Guy - but apparently 'becoming the mask' and all that, because Rhodey seemed increasingly prone to superhero antics just before all this had gone down.

 _Three months_ . Three months post-SHIELD. No labs, no resources, just what Tony could scavenge while keeping his head as low as possible and trying not to get killed. JARVIS would protect everything, he was certain - and if he couldn't, then he'd expunge all of Tony's plans, his blueprints and schematics and data. He would know that Tony would sooner start from scratch than have his tech being used by _HYDRA_.

Three months Post-SHIELD, since Tony had seen any of the others, or heard any real news. HYDRA had a stranglehold on the media, he knew - but there were signs. Even the best strangle hold couldn't stifle everything: wild thunderstorms, an information leak, a sudden outbreak of violence here and there.

Tony sank his technological claws into HYDRA slowly, surely, carefully patching the tiny little holes he worked open with little lines of code and little electronic wires, and waited. Waited. Patient and vicious, tying everything together until it could all collapse with one. Firm. Pull.

\--

So that was when a fucking amnesiac assassin jumped him, of course.

At least Natasha had convinced Steve to give them a debrief on fucking James Buchanan Barnes before everything'd gone pear-shaped 'so they don't accidentally kill what you've done all this for' (her eyes a sort of savage mix of threat and despair). Tony hadn't had a positive reaction to the whole thing, but he'd at least kept it to one or two cutting remarks that he didn't bother sharing with the others.

Well, that was one thing, but getting surprised attacked by a filthy, ragged man with a gleaming metal hand was another. Tony would have absolutely blown the back of his head off in the ensuing struggle if the Winter Soldier hadn't overpowered him and subdued him completely. He'd been sure of all of a minute and forty-two seconds that he was about to fucking _die_ and that things would be up to Pepper and JARVIS to finish was he'd started, supposing they were still free and alive (they'd _better_ still be free and alive, he hadn't heard otherwise, but he didn't _know_. JARVIS would easily be able to find the strings that Tony would leave to cut the entire puppet of HYDRA loose).

Then the fucking assassin asshole, the barrel of the gun that was _Tony's_ jammed so hard against his head he could tell it would bruise, said " _turn it off_. My arm. Turn it off!"

Tony was stunned silent for all of three seconds before, teeth bared, the grungy, soot-stained amnesiac gave him a violent shake, hard enough to rap his head against the floor.

" _Okay_ ," Tony yelped; from Natasha and Steve's report, he'd known that the man might be getting his memories back, might become a man rather than a robot again, but he was used to requests for help being a little less - violent. It was enough to make the man ease up on him, despite the wild look on his face. (Something in Tony's psyche lurches, something that recognizes that look.) He said "the whole thing?"

Lips pulled back from sharp white teeth (commercials of the forties' brilliant) and he said, savagely, "the _signal_."

The pieces clicked forward like tumblers in a lock, that word being the key. " _Oh_ ," Tony said, then "oh fuck."

Maybe the Winter Soldier was one of HYDRA's favorite toys, maybe he wasn't, but they still wanted him _back_ , apparently. Tony nearly got blown up in the following explosive chase, but the Winter Soldier seemed hell bent on keeping him alive, if just long enough to turn off the tracking device buried in his arm, and that was convincing enough.

\--

Of course, easier said than done. Barnes clearly wanted the device disabled, but only barely more than he wanted no one to ever touch his arm _ever_. Tony soaked a clean strap of jeans in whiskey for the crazy bastard to chew on like this was an old wild-west movie or a spy film, then went to town. He nearly got clocked a few times for his trouble, but he moved quickly, not lingering to marvel over the shape and build of the thing.

He was pretty sure he could do better, if just because he'd never tried something like building a whole actual arm that - well, he wasn't sure how it was attached to Barnes, since that part was still under his shirt, and he wasn't sure how it received signals from Barnes' brain, but anyway. The point remained that if Tony had all his toys at his disposal, he would have been interested in designing a new arm. A _better_ arm.

(No, shut up, Tony was not feeling threatened by other people's tech, nuh-uh.)

He got it out, destroyed the device, and then they were on the move again, _just in case_ . Or rather, as soon as he sealed the arm back up, _Barnes_ had been on the move, and for reasons Tony didn't understand, he'd snatched up his pathetic few supplies and gone after him.

Barnes had nothing to say about that, but his path never took him anywhere Tony couldn't follow, so that was something, at least.

\--

They don't talk and they don't sleep. Mostly, Tony worked at what he had been working on, sneaking into HYDRA's things, programming a near-sentient intelligence and letting it loose inside. He named her ANNA, and maybe he accidentally called her his sweet baby-girl a few times out loud, but it wasn't like he _meant to_ (and okay, maybe she's a little more sentient than she should be, but it's been ages since he last spoke to JARVIS, not that it has anything to do with it).

Barnes mostly sat in a corner being twitchy, spending half his time acting like an alley cat with a broken leg and the other half just being plain nuts. Tony did his studied best to pretend not to notice Barnes' worst moments, mostly because _he_ wouldn't want it (at least he'd had the decency to go have his worst moments _alone_ , but Barnes was worse than a starved dog fed _once_ ).

What was left of the bottle of whiskey disappeared, and Tony pursed his lips.

\--

"Alright," he said at last, and Barnes startled and bristled and looked at him like a mad-wild pony that had been lassoed and thrust into a corral (there was a short stint in his late teens that he'd been really into a girl who was really into horses). "Alright," he said again, " _look_ , neither one of us is a 'talking about it' kind of guy - I mean, you're from the forties when I'm pretty sure men didn't even _have_ feelings, and it's just a bad topic all over for me, would get rid of them if I could, but -"

There was something _human_ looking back at him out of the Winter Soldier's eyes. Maybe not Cap's old friend Bucky, but _someone_. Someone who was giving him that familiar old baffled look of alarm and confusion that people got, sometimes, when he got going.

Tony buckled down. He felt, painfully, like he'd been getting mature these last five years or so, making hard decisions that he didn't like but seemed like they were the best ones. It started in a cave with a man who broke open Tony's chest and grabbed his damaged heart, and the growing pains were still ongoing and he - well. Whatever. He was a work in progress, it showed in Iron Man Mark-whichever, was what he was saying.

"Look," he told Barnes, looked him dead in the eye with the sort of gravity he tried not to give people he couldn't trust with himself. "I've been where you are - not exactly. But close. You -" He paused, but figured the words were descriptive enough, so he said "you've got a lot of red to your name. Some people are going to tell you that you don't, that you don't have any responsibility for that, and some people are going to tell you that you do. And none of that matters compared to what you tell yourself. Captain America could go blue in the face, telling you that you were amnesiac or brainwashed or whatever, but you and I, we know that doesn't change that little voice in the back of your head."

There wasn't agreement or recognition in Barnes' face, but neither was there denial, eyes dark and wary under the matted tangle of his hair.

Tony had to look away because this was getting too raw. "Or hell, maybe you don't have it, I don't know. But if you do, you know it doesn't shut up - it never will. It gets louder, and louder, until you can't drown it out. So you take to drinking. You take to stupid risks and you don't bother with safety measures, and it's not like you're _trying_ but it wouldn't be so bad if it happened - right? Or maybe you do. Maybe you _do_ try." He paused for a second, swallowing, then shrugged. "And fine. I'm the last person who is going to stand in your way, if that's what you really want. It's your life. You'll probably break Cap's heart, but in the end, that's your decision."

He glanced, and Barnes looked less baffled and more needled, all tense and scrunched up with a ferocious scowl on his face - the same kind of scowl that Tony often saw on Steve's, and _for crying out loud_ , these guys really had been brothers-in-arms if they shared facial expressions that way.

It was too difficult to look at him, so Tony turned his back, pulling the laptop closer and focusing on it. His mouth kept moving, and _saying_ things. "They called me the Merchant of Death, you know. Back when I was building weapons for war. I built things that killed thousands of people - hundreds of thousands, probably. Not all of them combatants. People - sold my weapons to the enemy, and they killed _our_ boys with them. Hell, even _I_ got a taste of my own medicine. And maybe my hands didn't push the buttons, but I handed that button out for the right price. I woke up, over my head in red, and - yeah, I almost destroyed myself. But I owed it to those people - those people's _families_ , to try to make up for that. To get out of the red margin and into the black. Balance the scales." The mythology flickered across his mind, a heart on one side, a feather on the other. "I'm gonna be making up for the red for a long, long time."

It still left him raw. It would _always_ leave him raw, not just because of the constant reminder that kept him alive, the icy blue glow of the reactor in his chest, but because he felt the weight every second of every day (hot and coppery rather than bitter and stale, surging in the back of his throat and threatening to flood his mouth and lungs and remind him what it _felt like_ ).

"You don't know anything about me," Barnes said, low and rough and threatening; that was more words strung together than he'd bothered with - well, _ever_ , around Tony.

"You're right, I don't," Tony said, the laptop a bright square in front of his eyes and nothing else, "I don't know anything about you. Don't wanna know - don't care. What you've done or haven't doesn't mean anything to me, any more than I care why you're _here_ instead of being out there looking for ol' Glory when all of HYDRA knows that he's been looking for you. I don't even care if you listen to a word I've said. Forget it all, if you want. Kill yourself, if that's what you wanna do, Barnes - no one here's going to stop you. If you think that's what will make it right. I've thought about it myself, trying to make that stupid voice shut up."

The fight went out of him, had been draining since he started talking. It was exhausting, trying to be a voice of reason, and he didn't know why he bothered. He meant nothing to Barnes. Barnes meant nothing to him, other than somehow he factored into this whole thing that went pear-shaped and fucked up everyone's day.

\--

A few days later, Barnes tried to eat lead.

Tony will probably never be sure whether he was meant to see it or not; Rhodey told him often enough that Tony somehow managed to outmaneuver the best laid plans without even trying. So, he walked in on Barnes with a gun in his mouth and Tony -

Well, Tony lost his shit. He somehow found himself on top of Barnes, fighting with him for control of the gun, but that didn't last long. Tony wasn't a physical guy no matter what self-defense classes he took, and Barnes - well, Barnes went head-to-head with Steve. He was big and compact and more physical and for all that they were on even feet for being on the run without any steady source of food or drink - he'd started from higher ground in the first place. Tony ended up on his back, but he was accustomed to being the underdog and didn't go down easily.

Somehow, in the middle of the struggle, Barnes fumbled his grip and Tony emptied the gun into the air. The gunshots drove Barnes into a dive for cover, an instinctual scramble, and then Tony heaved himself to his feet and threw the empty gun at him.

"What the _fuck_ , Four Seasons," he snarled, breathless and furious. He was only mildly mollified by watching the empty, hot gun bounce off Barnes' head.

Barnes heaved himself to his feet, breathing heavy and looking like a rabid dog. "Thought you didn't care if I offed myself," he growled.

Belatedly, Tony remembered saying that. It had seemed like a reasonable thing to offer back then, but with the memory of Barnes sitting there with a fucking gun in his mouth - it seemed like one of the most stupid things that Tony had _ever_ said. Which was saying something; he has said a lot of stupid shit in his lifetime. "I didn't _mean_ it, you stupid asshole," he said, sounding breathless and strangely young even to his own ears, the solid ground beneath his feet rolling like waves. "What the hell is wrong with you! I'm Tony fucking Stark, you're not supposed to take _my_ life advice!"

The rabid-dog look slowly drained from Barnes' face, the tight, angry tension of his frame unspooling unexpectedly all over the wall he leaned back against. He scoffed, his head hanging until the ragged tangled of his hair hid his expression. "You're a real piece of work, you know that, Stark?"

"Yeah, join the fucking party, Jimbo," Tony said, feeling slightly less panicky than earlier, though his breaths came too fast and almost gulped. He forced himself to hold them, but it didn't help (it never did). "Join the fucking party. We're a full house. Jokers' Wild."

\--

It was at that point that there came a turn to the tide. Tony hadn't misunderstood the important bit, which was they were _really_ 'not talking about it' kinds of people. It was a huge relief actually, even if he had to take to prodding Barnes anytime he felt like the man was staring at nothing too intently. For his part, Barnes doesn't make another obvious attempt at taking his own life, which was an even bigger relief. Not that Tony _cared_ , because he very much didn't - but if Barnes managed to off himself while in Tony's care, Rogers would probably kill him.

('Tony's _care_ '. He almost threw up one morning upon that thought, the words bouncing around his head. He was decent enough at taking care of robots and programs and machines, good _enough_ at it, even, but - people were another matter. He paid other people to take care of _him_ , actually, which should say enough about his 'taking care of' capacity.

\- then again, at times Barnes acted more like a machine than a person, so - )

\--

So they were on the run and barely being able to see after their own basic needs, like shelter and food and hygiene (Barnes turned out to be a world-class pickpocket, and Tony snapped pictures of drivers licenses before they leave the cashless wallets behind), but that doesn't mean they have to _look_ like it. Homeless people draw attention, Tony knew, at least in the more civilized parts of towns. Middle-class people so did hate the homeless.

"Are you fuckin' kidding me," Barnes said, staring askance at the clothes that Tony was offering.

"Not in the least, old man," Tony said, "and also we're getting you a haircut, or at least something to keep it out of your face, you can't keep rockin' the hobo look. It attracts attention. Middle-America good-looks would be best, but looking pissed off won't help, so let's not get ahead of ourselves, here."

"Uh huh," he said doubtfully, "and that's why you're letting this whole mess grow in?" He gestured to his own face, but the meaning was clear.

"It's not a _mess_ ," Tony said mulishly, though to be honest, he really missed his style. _His_ style, distinctive and unchanging, as characteristic of him as the Iron Man mask. But yeah, he'd let it all grow in evenly, keeping it too short to be a real beard. He was satisfied by the effect, anyway; people's eyes don't linger on him at all anymore.

Very reluctantly, Barnes snatched the clothes from him and after an hour (stretching into two hours, nearly two and a half; apparently someone missed hot water), he emerged from the bathroom, clean shaven and fresh faced. Evidently, he'd made some attempt at shearing his own hair but had given up on that, for reasons that were none of Tony's business.

Tony looked at him in consternation, thinking _what the fuck_ , and _if all people were this hot in the forties, I've been missing out_ . He then promptly tossed that thought to the wayside, as this was neither the time nor the place, his one true love was technology even if he gave his heart to Pepper (but it will go on), yadda yadda, fighting for their lives. Also, Steve Rogers' amnesiac best friend, might as well remember that part. Tony liked having his head attached to his shoulders and also preferably not getting punched, or having it separated from his shoulders _by_ a punch.

\--

They get into a fight about Barnes' hair. No really. It started out with words, but then there was a tussle and everything, and a hundred years old or not, Barnes acted like an actual five year old. Tony was appalled, though Barnes wasn't unlike Steve in that manner. He remembered Pepper laughing so hard she couldn't make a sound when he'd complained to her about Steve's childishness.

Tony was getting _old_. (He misses Pepper with a sharp, persistent ache.)

So anyway, despite the clear evidence of an attempted trim, Barnes didn't want scissors anywhere near his hair, but he didn't seem wild about the idea of a ponytail, either. No amount of Tony trying to argue logic seemed to help at all, which was where the whole actual tussle came in. Though at least Barnes didn't _hurt_ him, the way Tony knew he could.

"This is about blending in, you stupid fuck," Tony said, out of breath and annoyed (but not as annoyed as he should be, not fighting as hard as he should be, not entirely certain _why_ ).

Barnes pinned Tony to the floor with casual efficiency, the reactor pressed into his lungs, his hands squeezing warningly against Tony's wrists but not too tightly. (Steve had grabbed him similarly, once, twice, more times than that, touched him in hot-headed anger and later looked appalled by the bruises that had come in dark on Tony's skin, black and sickly yellow-green. Tony took to wearing longer sleeves and Steve stopped touching him at all.)

"I have a metal arm," Barnes said flatly, unimpressed with Tony's logic. "How much blending in can I do?"

"There's a thing called _sleeves_ ," Tony snapped, felt like he should be wheezing but not having to quite yet. Felt like he should twist and struggle and buck, but didn't. Did press his wrists up against the grip.

They bicker about it (Tony can't believe he's bickering about clothing and haircuts with _anyone_ , especially as it's not in defense of his own.). Eventually, Barnes let him up off the floor, and eventually they compromised and Tony felt a little satisfied and a lot annoyed with himself. They got Barnes the sleeves that minimum wage workers wore to cover their tattoos at their minimum wage jobs, and a set of gloves.

"Look at you," Tony said, knocking his elbow into Barnes' (flesh) arm. "Almost a real boy."

"Almost," Barnes agreed, pensively.

\--

Barnes took an aggressive interest into Tony's work. Then again, everything Barnes did, he did aggressively. Tony wondered if that was old habit, or if that was carried over from his days as a brainwashed assassin. (He's tactless but he doesn't ask _that_ . Doesn't ask Barnes anything, really, not about his past or present or plans for the future. Hell, the only plan _Tony_ has is to keep searching for the others, evade detection if at all possible, and hope that if they all regroup, there will be a plan and he can cut all the strings he's carefully stretching out through all of HYDRA.)

Barnes, though, Barnes said that he'd read all the information HYDRA had on the Avengers, and considering that what SHIELD knew, HYDRA knew, it was a lot. Tony felt some hysteric relief that he'd been so ornery about the entire SHIELD thing, hacking their files and screwing with not just his own, but the others'.

"I was supposed to kill Captain America," Barnes said pensively. "They weren't sure the Avengers wouldn't interfere."

Something twisted in Tony's gut. They should have. Hell, he doesn't even always _like_ Steve, but he was Captain fucking America, and sure Tony had his own business to focus on, but -

(He doesn't even like Steve, most of the time, but - _Steve_.)

"Yeah, well," Tony said, "I'm not enough of an egoist just to show off my suit, no offense, I trust you not to strangle me but I don't show off the suit, I just _don't_ \- but. There are other things."

Barnes turned out to be extremely interested in the other things. Hell, Barnes looked intensely interested in all of it, all the things that Pepper and the Avengers and SHIELD took for granted, all of it was new to Barnes, and there was a shine of intelligence in his eye, and interest and curiosity even when he couldn't follow Tony's explanations. That was - gratifying.

"I used to go to the - the Expo," Barnes said, slow and careful and cautious, like he was testing out frozen water over a lake or river. "I re - it was really lame when I thought I was gonna see a flying car but it failed."

Tony hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath until he snorted. "Eh," he said, "flying cars. Interesting theory, terrible in practice. Maybe after they can drive themselves we can work on that. And we don't say 'lame' anymore, Jimmy One-Arm, my god, you're in more dire need of a pop culture update than Blue-eyed and Bullheaded."

Barnes grunted, sounding particularly unimpressed.

\--

That was when things got weird. Well, things already _had_ been weird, to be honest; Tony was on the run and had an amnesiac assassin (okay, so he wasn't an amnesiac, obviously, but Tony was going to let him pretend) actually working _with him_ , acting as pickpocket and body guard both. A man from fucking World War II, and yet was physically just slightly more than a decade younger than he was.

Then Barnes got invested in learning more about the future in a way that Steve had never bothered with (Steve always took it in stride, compensating for the new information but never taking an interest in it. Barnes was clearly the more exploratory type, and Tony appreciated that - those personalities were the most fun, the ones that always found new and exciting ways to break his stuff so he could find new and better ways to keep it from breaking). He spoke more, asking questions and making snide little remarks. Somewhere along the way, he shoved his way into Tony's personal space.

(Tony remembered old WWII photos, young men in army drab all falling over each other, even the lack of personal space that happened _to this day_ in their forces. Rhodey always let Tony climb all over him, has for years longer that he maybe should have. His skin crawls, makes him wanna jump up but - also makes him ... _not_.)

Tony started waking up too hot from another body curled next to his. The frissons of panic that made him tense always startled Barnes back awake, though clearly the only person feeling awkward about this whole thing was _Tony_.

(Then his body learns, the way it does, the way it must have not to have him startling awake at the first touch of Barnes' skin to his. His body learns quicker than his mind does if only because his body is dumb and his mind is too familiar with the capricious turn of his heart to trust in anything. His body tugs one way and his mind another, but his body turns it off and wins every time Tony closes his eyes.)

Barnes took an aggressive interest into the future and Tony's work (and _Tony_ ) and pressed close, ignoring all the careful boundaries of society (a handshake, that was all - a handshake: two seconds in length and release; three seconds lingered too long).

(Tony wants to shove him off and can't, sets the heel of his palm to the table, to the chair, to Barnes' chest, but never manages to applies the necessary pressure, the necessary leverage, to set the machine in motion. His skin's too-tight-too-loose, fingers trembling, and the machine still won't lurch to life.)

Barnes learned about tying his hair back, high on the back of his head to catch all of it, then only half pulled through the elastic to keep it from flopping forward or slapping his face when he went on the alert. Tony strangled down his giggles and sarcastic words about the bun, because previous proof aside, he does have _some_ self-preservation.

Barnes discovered that he hates mustard and likes mayo, doesn't care for ham lunch meat but that most brands of turkey were pretty excellent (he doesn't say it, but Tony watches him lick his thumbs and the corner of his mouth), despised all brands of soda but liked mineral water more than purified.

(Barnes decides he likes using bar soap to shave his face more than any gel or creme despite missing a shaving brush, hates razors with more than one blade or pivoting heads, and has been working on managing a smile in the mirror that doesn't look like a skinned manikin head. Tony wakes up more and more often on his stomach but braced up off the arc reactor by Barnes' shoulder.)

\--

They must have stayed in one place too long, because they get found. Barnes wasn't interested in sticking in one place, Tony knew, and they'd moved more than once because Barnes had decided he was too fidgety to stay and Tony - well, whatever was going on inside of him, Tony couldn't seem to _not_ go with him.

(He remembers being _too-young_ and _too-small_ at MIT, chasing after Rhodey's heels after the barest kind word, the strange dark look in Rhodey's eyes, the feeling of being pinned down like his skin got pulled back so he can't hide a thing.

Later, he'll realize that the feeling was someone actually _seeing_ him, though he tries not to think about it - _why are you being so nice to me_ and _Tony, I'm just treatin' you like a human being_ \- )

However it happened, HYDRA caught up to them and it was Afghanistan all over - not the _three months_ part, not the _Ten Rings_ part, but the whole Humvee/funvee attack part. Tony doesn't have his Iron suit and there were people shooting at him.

Barnes seemed to object to that - strenuously. It was mostly an endless swirl of violence for Tony - getting his hand on a gun, because the guy's face had caved in under the force of a steel fist, ducking hiding, being dragged around by the front of his shirt, the shirt ripping because he'd stupidly cut it open and never hemmed the hole. And explosions, of course. Barnes seemed to like explosions.

(Tony would appreciate that except that he feels bitingly vulnerable (and afraid))

Barnes burned through guns, shooting them to empty and discarding them without a thought, which was a damned waste as far as Tony was concerned, and he might hate weapons but he designed so many of them and worked them and turned them over in his hands and shot so many (again and again) that he reloaded them with ease (they don't reload as fast as the ones that SI built, but - _well_ ). Tony took their ammo and reloaded the guns and pressed them into Barnes' hands and Barnes only froze for a moment before taking aim and opening fire.

Finally, _finally_ , silence fell (punctuated by a few whimpers, a few breaths ripped from damaged throats), and Barnes just stood there, tilting his head and looking around, studying it all with a cool eye. When Tony could breathe again, he crawled out of his hiding place, the precious laptop with ANNA on it clutched tight to his chest. He stumbled, felt shaking and unreal, his ears ringing with violence and his eyes tearing from acrid smoke. _Holy Shit_ . He'd heard Natasha's debrief of the Winter Soldier going after Steve, but he hadn't realized just how - well, _effective_ it was. And all these dead bodies (blood and flesh and broken bone).

"Come on, Bambi," Barnes said, voice both strangely flat and strangely furious, "let's get moving. There'll be reinforcements anytime."

"Right," Tony said, still a little shell-shocked, then - " _oh, fuck you_. Fuck you, Barnes! When the hell did you ever watch Disney! Did they even have Disney in the nineteen-forties? Ridiculous."

\--

Barnes doesn't stop calling him Bambi, which caused uncomfortable and uncertain feelings in his chest, and began blatantly _cuddling_ him, which caused uncomfortable and uncertain feelings in his pants. His libido might have been milder since Afghanistan (since forty-years-old, maybe, who fucking knows) and more prone to reacting to breasts and blood-red lips, but he's not made of fucking stone and no one's touched him since Pepper and that's been more than half a year ago, and - and well, Barnes was hot. There wasn't any two ways about that.

Tony searched the internet with Barnes' head nestled into his rib cage, striving to keep any type of panic attack down. Irrationally, more than anything, he felt like Captain America himself was going to break down the shitty hotel door and punch him in the mouth. The guy already didn't like him, Tony didn't imagine that stealing his best friend would do him any favors.

(Oh sure, they got along well enough - the initial friction apologized for and words taken back and all that jazz. They get along well enough, can work together, and Tony _does_ heel when Steve says it unless he's got a damned good reason not to. That doesn't mean they like each other as people, and they still shout at each other and Tony knows exactly how big Steve's hands are because one time he got drunk and measured the breath of the bruises.)

"God," Barnes said once in the muted darkness of the silent hotel room, "and I thought Steve's head kept barrelin' along like a train, Bambi, but they locked the perpetual motion machine inside your skull" and "suppose if anyone could manage, that'd be Howard Stark, alright."

Tony was pretty sure that Barnes wasn't well-read enough to know about the requirements of the perpetual motion machine (complete isolation) but his breath locked inside his chest and wouldn't come out until Barnes straddled his chest and slapped him.

(In the morning, Tony's disappointed to see that there's no mark on his cheek.)

\--

To be completely honest, Tony fucking _hated_ the military. Every branch of it. Hated the history of it, the culture of it, hated the necessity of it. (Loves the troops. Hate the orders, love the troops. A young man throwing up 'V' for victory. Tony loves entirely _too many_ soldiers to love the thing that puts them at risk.)

He said nothing, his fingers not even faltering as he communicated with ANNA, when Barnes began to hum some tune with undeniable military cadence. It wasn't like Tony couldn't smell the gun oil that Barnes had come up with from gods knew where, couldn't hear the quiet clink of the parts of the guns.

That was good, right? Barnes had come leaps and bounds from the cornered animal that he'd been those first few weeks. Barnes had been reconstructing the person he was with careful concentration while Tony had been busy holding ANNA's hand and helping his baby-girl dig her pretty little claws in all of HYRDA. The fact that Barnes was feeling musically inclined, an inclination that Tony sympathized very strongly with was a good thing. Except that it was a military song.

( _I wanna be a soldier!_ and _don't be stupid, your brain's where your worth's at, boy_.)

Barnes probably needed twenty years of weekly therapy to repair the damage that he'd gone through, but - to be honest, Tony did, too. And look at him! He was function fine. Occasionally murdering the HYRDRA goons that caught up to them seemed to help Barnes a lot more than any words from _Tony_.

(Barnes sings, soft and absentmindedly, like he's stuck in a memory and no longer conscious of the hotel room or Tony's fingers on the keys. The words are familiar, the cadence of them like a march, like a heart beat pumping arterial blood over fingertips; Howard had taught him this song over a tumbler he'd had to hold with both hands.)

Then again, Barnes was keeping _him_ alive, and Tony had owned up pretty quick about ANNA and his plans to destroy it from the roots up.

 

 


	2. Sentinel AU,Gen(ish)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best thing to catch a damaged Sentinel with is a suitable Guide. Tony just doesn't know why Steve thinks HE'S the Guide to catch the ex-Winter Soldier with. There are more talented Guides that aren't quite as fucked up as him, you know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sentinel/Guide Au, Guides are more prevalent than Sentinels. Kind of cracky. Suggested emotional brutalization in the course of creating the Winter Soldier. Gen(ish) in that it was intended to be WinterIron but no actual WinterIron takes place yet.

 

* * *

 

For a Sentinel, Steve Rogers was in amazing control of his emotions and gifts. SHIELD hadn't been sure how much of that was a fairy tail obviously, considering that of their pick of extraordinary individuals, they were most prominently Guides.

When not being sabotaged by alien devices, however, Steve did an admirable job of being fully functional all by his lonesome. (Tony had not been disappointed in the _least_.) It probably had something to do with the serum, an idea that Tony gave more than a little contemplation considering the utter zen that Bruce had most of the time.

So when Steve came barreling into Tony's workshop in a haze of desperation and fury and hurt, Tony nearly brained himself and sprained an ankle when he hopped to and got ready to take on the entire world because _holy shit_ . Anyone who said that the Guide influence went one way was a fucking idiot. Being a Guide was _self-defense_.

"I need your help," Steve blurted, and rubbed his mouth roughly and in general looked wild-eyed.

"Okay, okay, Jesus," Tony said, "What? What are we doing? Are we blowing up the world, taking it over - what the hell is going on?"

Steve stared at him for a second, then shook it off, snapping "never mind, follow me."

" _Wait_ ," Tony wailed after him, standing where he was indecisively. "Do I need my suit?"

"You definitely don't need your suit," Steve shouted back, and Tony cursed and ran after him.

\--

"I hate you," Tony said a few days later when Steve's evil plan suddenly became clear.

"Com'n, Tony," Steve said - whined, near-like, Brooklyn thick on his tongue. He was busy making calf-eyes at the hobo down the street, who had snatched a bag of donuts off a pedestrian and was now munching on one with mechanical efficiency.

"We don't know each other well enough for you to take that tone with me," he warned, glancing between Steve - who was busy projecting enough hurt feelings and longing and concern that there were a few guides on the street casting alarmed looks their direction - and the man, whose choppy ... _self_ , was frankly making Tony's teeth hurt. "The fuck do you expect me to do," he added testily, narrowing his eyes at the broken Sentinel down the street, who he was _not_ stupid enough to think isn't very well aware of them. The casual slouch to his shoulders and spine did nothing to change the grating sense of awareness against Tony's self.

"Well, you're a _Guide_ , aren't you," Steve said crossly.

"Yeah, nominally," he muttered, cringing slightly. He knew he was a piss-poor Guide, but that hadn't stopped him trying to nail Steve with a shot of _calm down_ while under the influence of extraterrestrial mood-altering artifacts. "I just don't think Guide-whammying a guy whose been brainwashed is such a good idea."

" _Tony_ ," Steve hissed, but unwashed-hobo-down-the-street huffed and took off at that point. Tony had a moment of dismay until he felt something floating back, a little curl of _exasperation_. Steve was already on the move, but Tony was frozen there for a moment, and -

Unexpectedly intrigued.

Steve only had to come back and grab his wrist to pull him up. After that, Tony came willingly.

\--

Being a Guide was the worst, Tony suspected. Everyone always went _on_ and _on_ about Sentinel zoning and the special considerations required for high senses, anywhere from smells to tastes to touch - or all three or more, sometimes, if you were really unlucky.

But the world made _considerations_ , was Tony's point. There weren't any considerations that could be made for Guides - not when their realm of expertise lay in things that most people couldn't even control.

Howard had been less than impressed to discover that his one-and-only child, the heir to the Stark throne, was a _Guide_. Tony only took slight reassurance from the fact that being a Sentinel likely wouldn't have been any better. After all, to this day Sentinels were still eligible for the draft.

Alright, so it sucked both ways, but Tony maintained that it was worse being a Guide. Being assaulted by people feelings at a constant rate of a room full of people shouting? Not fun. Even less fun was when you got around someone particularly strong at projecting, which wasn't unlike when someone doused themselves in a particularly cheap perfume.

He'd managed to hide his Guide status from the public for a long time, but about the time that he got kidnapped by the Ten Rings? Well -

Sentinel panic was as good of an explanation as any. Truthfully, none of the Sentinels there would have been strong enough to scent him out on their own, but Tony proved quite violently that he could nail even a barely-worth-the-title Sentinel with a particularly strong emotion and put them into a feral fugue, so that was something.

Sentinels protected things - people. It was what they _did_. All a Guide had to do was tell them that they succeeded, or they failed, and then sit back and watch the pretty explosions go sky high.

\--

"Look," Tony said sourly, "if you couldn't hunt the guy down with _two_ Guides, what the hell do you think throwing me at the guy is going to do? Admittedly, I may be slightly less terrifying than Natasha, but surely Wilson would have gone over well enough."

Steve got his sour-grim game face on, jaw all tense as he continued to scout ahead. At least he'd clamped down on his emotions at Tony's behest; while Steve probably wouldn't have been able to drown out Mister Jangles if he was in Tony's range, it was still - well, it was better not to feel so much of Steve.

"You're not wrong," Steve said, which - cute. Stealing Tony's phrase. Rude. "They probably used Guides to subdue him in the first place. It was common during the War."

Tony twitched, said "ah." It wasn't like he _didn't_ know, but for him, WWII had been seventy years ago in the first place, and in the second place, not even a part of his history. In other words, Tony couldn't maintain the interference that Guides typically applied to Sentinels to keep them calm for long periods of time. Tony was more of a slap to the face than a 'pin them down' sort.

He _felt_ a little slapped in the face, to be honest.

"Yeah," he added, "but Wilson -"

"Sam has enough on his plate without doin' me favors," Steve snapped.

"Fine, fine," Tony said, backing off figuratively and literally, his palms up in surrender. Well, Wilson _did_ provide Guide support to the VA. Guides were especially necessary for drafted Sentinels for obvious reasons. Tony wondered if Wilson had been wrangling a whole troop of Sentinels before he'd come back home, or if he'd been working with just one in particular. If the latter, it was equally likely that Wilson may have actually _bonded_ with a Sentinel.

Tony entertained himself wondering if that was true, and if so, if Wilson _still_ had that Sentinel around, or if he didn't, that was why he'd been sent back home. Guides might have been the ones who built the bond, but they were no less a slave to it than the Sentinel they put on a leash.

"I just think," he said, "that perhaps letting the guy come around on his own terms would be a smarter idea, if he's really broken his training."

Steve made a series of interesting movements that Tony only recognized too well as restraint from throwing a punch. He was slightly impressed that the guy managed not to even punch a wall - but, well, if he had, it was more likely the wall would break than his hand. Also, this was downtown, and the walls were holding up roofs on small businesses, and other Good Ol' American things like that.

"I can't," he said, sounding like he was swallowing broken glass and rusty nails. "Bucky needs me."

"Bucky sounds like he needs space to get his head on right," Tony said under his breath, stepping sideways just to decrease his suitability for snatching or hitting in respect for his words increasing the attraction of doing so.

"What would you know about getting your head on right," he snapped, not even looking at Tony.

"Well," Tony said, coming to a stop. "This hasn't been fun, it's all been rather pointless, thanks anyway, think I'm gonna head back home to the project I dropped in the middle of when you came barreling into my workshop begging for my _help_."

Steve turned, his jaw tight and lips white with anger, but his eyes regretful. "I didn't mean that," he said.

"Yes, you did," Tony said flatly, reaching up to tap his temple. "Guide, remember? _Look_ . I get it, okay? You blasted me with a face full of your emotional turmoil over this guy. _I get it_ . But guy just gets all peevish and annoyed when you tag along like a lost duck. Leave him alone for a bit, Rogers. He'll come back when he's ready - _if_ he's ready to come back. Hell, at this rate, I'll welcome him into the tower with open arms. Anyone who doesn't put up with your bullshit is A-okay in my books."

Steve chewed air for a moment, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He looked like he was fighting a war against himself, no politer than the war he'd fought for his country. At last, he looked at Tony kind of dolefully and said "was he really?"

There was that desperation again, leaking out of Steve's walls like sweat, uncontrollable and pungent. "Well, you didn't think he didn't notice we were creeping on him, did you?" He asked sarcastically. "The guy's all fucked up, in the head and in the heart, but that doesn't mean they don't work." Tony should know.

He barely bit back the words: _this guy isn't your friend, might never be_ , but he somehow managed. He didn't really believe it himself, after all - 1940's hobo might have been broken completely, but he still had semi-positive emotional responses toward Steve.

Steve looked strangely lost, and a bit more leaked out from under his tight shields (longing and concern and _pain_ ). "That's more than Natasha or Sam got," he said, not looking at Tony.

"Well, he's been wandering around eating donuts for a few weeks," Tony said with a snort. "I feel better after some good ol' starch and sugar, too. Leave the guy alone for a while, Steve. Let him do his version of biking across the United States."

That earned him a shuffle and hunched shoulders. "I can't," he said miserably. "What if they find him again?"

Tony didn't even know the guy and his stomach did a might back-flip and he felt like throwing up. He'd heard all about the guy, of course - Natasha and Steve weren't dumb enough not to give everyone the low down on James "Bucky" Barnes: a mix of warning, but also a plea. Tony hated small spaces or being places that he couldn't easily get out of; strangely enough, that quickly followed seeing _other people_ in similar situations.

"Then you assemble the Avengers and we _avenge_ the shit out of him," Tony said flippantly. He knew it wasn't as easy as that - that even just getting _caught_ -

"Tony," Steve said reproachfully.

"Yeah, hunting a guy down is a shitty approach," he snapped, the vestiges of fear still curling in his stomach. "Give him some breathing space, Steve, the guy could use it."

The words didn't seem to impress Steve much, but after a second, the guy's shoulders sunk and he seemed less like he might try to fight Tony. It probably wasn't going to be a fight Tony would have been able to win, but he would have given it a good go.

"That's what Sam and Natasha said, too," Steve admitted, and wow, fuck him.

"Next time, try listening when Guides tell you a thing," he said shortly. "Come on, Cap, let's go back home."

\--

Okay, so the truth was: Tony Stark didn't want to touch Bucky Barnes and his issues with a ten foot pole.

In the five minutes that they'd actually caught up with the guy, he'd discovered that the guy didn't have shields for _shit_ \- probably helped his Guide-suppressors back at HYDRA, but it made Tony want to throw up a bit. Even mundanes had shields, even if they were mostly just gauzy veils over their emotions. The Winter-Soldier-who-wasn't? Was raw and painful, sharp angles and rust and a smell like blood.

"Tony," Pepper said, "I love you, _dearly_ , you know I do -" and he did, it was never a question, he could taste it back when they used to kiss, but it was always accompanied by _pain_ , "but don't you think it's a little fishy that Captain America waved you around like a red flag?"

"Of course I do, Pep," he said, twisting the schematic before moodily flinging it back into it's folder. There was no way he was going to be able to focus. "Just haven't been able to figure out _why_."

"Well, if we're spectacularly unlucky, it'll be for some pre-Winter Soldier reason," Pepper said, the way she did when they were weighing risks against SI - why this or that company wanted this or that contract, what they might be using SI technology _for_.

It's not his favorite thing when they discuss _him_ in the same way, but he's a realist. An ambitious realist, perhaps, but he's pragmatic at heart. Both Iron Man and Tony Stark are an asset to be managed very carefully; in this instance, his worth as an asset is as a Guide.

Considering that only SHIELD and the Avengers (and Pepper and Rhodey) know his Guide status, they're not very well trained in this kind of risk assessment.

"He can't seriously expect you to _fix_ the Winter Soldier," Pepper said after a moment, slightly incredulous but also slightly like she thinks that might be _exactly_ what was going on.

Tony scoffed hard enough to hurt his throat, and he laughed. "Excuse me," he said, trying to catch his breath. "When you've got Natasha and Wilson, two Guides who would probably have the _best_ skill set for managing and fixing a brainwashed super soldier with PTSD, why would you need me?"

"That's true," she agreed after a second; Tony couldn't help the insulted huff he gave, but he was used to Pepper agreeing with him when he was being honest. "Unless," she added suddenly, and cocked her head.

"Oh no," Tony said mildly, lounging back against his table with trepidation. "What weird interpersonal bullshit is going on now?"

"I'll have a talk with Steve," Pepper said, instead of answering him, her brow drawn just slightly down.

"Ouch," he said, "I kind of feel like I should text ahead and give the guy a warning, maybe send up his shield."

"Uh huh," she said, unimpressed but a little amused. "Trust me, Tony, that shield wouldn't stop me."

"Wasn't saying it would, but I'm pretty sure it's his security blanket. At least he'll feel a little better after you're done with him."

She rolled her eyes with a smile, but then left with a swish of red hair and sharp heels. Tony missed her almost immediately. He gave a moment to think about what would happen to the world if Steve and Pepper ever teamed up to take it over, and figured with a sad huff that all they'd have to do was smile and it'd be on offer to them.

Good thing being a cougar wasn't Pepper's thing, or buff blond guys. He hoped, anyway.

\--

Tony never got a chance to find out how that whole thing with Pepper and Steve went or what she thought was going on, anyway, before he had a whole new problem.

Contrary to most of the Avengers' opinion, he spent _plenty_ of time outside his workshop. He had to keep the room fresh, actually, because if he got too accustomed to the workspace, then his brain stagnated. And Pepper might have cold-shouldered him for a month or two the last time he drastically redecorated, anyway.

So yes, meetings and galas and charity events left and right, but Tony also spent a fair amount of time out on the town just driving around, or flying through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, or - in this case - standing out on the landing pad atop Stark Tower.

He liked to go up there with a tumbler of scotch, maybe sometimes get a little close to the edge and tease his brain with a bit of vertigo. Anyone who thought that Iron Man meant that he couldn't get dizzy about heights was dumb - it just took away his fear of falling. Under the right circumstances, JARVIS would always catch him.

Plus it was quiet. No body's emotions were shouting at him when he was on top of the world.

Well, usually.

Tony fumbled his tumbler as the placid flatness of the roof crackled, a sharp bloodied wreck assembling itself like Cthulhu raising from the ocean. Scotch slashed all over his fingers and Tony jerked his feet back to avoid getting it on his good shoes, pivoting.

"Well," he said, staring at the hobo perched precariously on his roof. "How about that. Did you follow Steve home, boy? I guess if he defleas you he can keep you, you know - this being my home and all. Baths are required frequently, though - a least once a week, but if we can work up to once a day, that'd be great. And a shave. Please shave, my god, and a hair cut - well, those last two will be negotiable, I guess."

In between the utterly _smashed_ walls (broken cement, like a condemned building with the supports blown clear) that same tantalizing curl of exasperation was emerging. Maybe Tony had been wrong - maybe the hobo-best-friend hadn't been reacting to Steve at all.

He refused to think about how guilty that made him feel, remembering the leak of desperation from Steve.

When there was still no response from the broken Sentinel on his rooftop, Tony sighed loudly and downed the rest of his drink, grimacing more at the waste of good scotch than the burn. "Well," he said, "nice to see you're in a talkative mood. Never had such stimulating conversations before. Let's stay up all night and chat until dawn, sweet pea, and in the morning we'll have lattes. Well, you can have a latte, I am more of an espresso man myself. I like my coffee like I like my men - dark, bitter, and liable to give me a heart attack."

That provoked a response, a sudden hiccup in the general rawness (hot and salty and the peach-pink of meat/muscle under skin) and exasperation: a hot spark, dangerous, like fireworks on gasoline. The Winter-Soldier-who-wasn't didn't so much as flick an eyelash or twitch his lips, but that was - something, at least.

"Alright," Tony allowed, inclining his head. "Good - got a sense of humor, anyway, that's a good - that's a good sign." And it was. He didn't have any other readings to base the information off of - Sam and Natasha's reports had pathetic little in the way of details a Guide would be interested in, and he doesn't know if that was on purpose. But Tony knew a thing or two about trauma, and a sense of humor was always good.

Then all psychic impressions of the guy up and flattened, and there was _nothing there_ , despite the man still sitting on Tony's rooftop, watching Tony closely. Absolutely nothing. Like he might as well have been a potted plant - the same way he must have been for Tony not have felt him coming. The entire time, the guy's face never changed, and then he was up, and there he went, vaulting over the side of Stark Tower.

Tony scrambled to the side where he'd jumped off, but there was very little to see, his heart going a million miles an hour. "Holy Christ on a cracker," he muttered, squinting against the bright lights and wind, and -

Maybe at the very bottom, he saw someone in the hobo's blue coat strolling away.

 


	3. Soulmate/Modern AU B/T

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James had been doing undercover work when SHIELD gave him permission to burn his cover to recover a stolen asset. Said asset just so happened to be his soulmate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written with the intention of exploring what happens AFTER meeting your soulmate. I ... didn't get that far. Still, Bucky-PoV and soulmates! I fucking love soulmates! 
> 
> Uses the soulmate rules from [this Stony drabble](http://justavengeit.tumblr.com/post/121678609273/description-in-which-tony-stark-finds-his) I wrote. It's custom tailored to my preferences. 
> 
> WARNINGS for blood and violence and sulky Steve who just wants his buddy :(

 

* * *

 

By the time that James was twenty-six, he'd already figured out that life fucking hated him. Now here he is, almost thirty, and it turned out that life didn't just hate him, it had it _out_ for him.

At that moment, Steve was giving him the _Bucky, are you serious_ look, which James doesn't deserve that, alright? It wasn't like he had a _choice_ in the matter, anymore than anyone else did, and he already had to fill out - like - thirty forms in triplicate over this thing. James fucking _hated_ paperwork.

Used to be, he'd get Steve to do it for him, but that was - well. Steve hadn't been involved in this mission, wouldn't be able to. Of course, back then, Steve was usually _why_ they might have to fill out incident reports, because Steve didn't know how to stay within _any_ mission perimeters the moment something outside them looked attractive. By which James meant in an intelligence way, because Steve already got himself imprinted on an MI5 agent and had since gone completely beauty-blind to all other girls and boys.

It had been one of James' few entertainments ever since Steve suddenly bloomed into ridiculousness after being the ugly duckling for so long; it had been a bit of a salve to his pride to watch Steve flush and panic anytime someone attractive so much as _smiled_ at him. Of course, now Steve had a _soulmate_ (and she was drop-dead _gorgeous_ , and stern as hell, and she and Steve were going to have such _pretty_ spy-babies) and Steve suddenly didn't seem to register how model-icious anyone was anymore.

"Bucky," Steve said.

"What," he answered, flat and unwelcoming, clicking the ballpoint pen in his grip. His right hand, because the left wasn't behaving and he didn't need to bust another pen.

Steve shifted from foot to foot just inside the doorway, like a fucking dog with a leash in his mouth desperate to go out. Lots of people found Steve terrifying in various ways, but James grew up with the kid - Steve's gonna be 'kid' even when they're ninety in the same nursing home - and he knew him better than that.

"Bucky," Steve said, "you _imprinted_ , and you're here filling out paperwork."

"Yeah, I kinda noticed, seeing as how I was _there_ ," he snapped.

And what a fucking nightmare that had been. When he'd gotten the message that he was getting permission to blow his cover because some idiot billionaire had gotten captured, he'd been _pissed_. He'd spent two years working his way into the goddamned good graces of brutal (desperate) people, all fucking alone except a contact named Ana who spoke better Russian than he did.

He'd thought the reaction was just adrenaline at the time, until he'd realized he knew _exactly_ which room the guy was in, exactly how many feet away to the _inch_ (to the _centimeter_ , actually). Also the pull. There wasn't really another way to describe it, really - like the tug in your stomach when on a roller coaster or plunged deep underwater.

The fucking crime syndicate had taken his fucking soulmate hostage. He'd been suddenly infinitely glad for the permission to burn his cover because he would have had to anyway. SHIELD would have understood, he thought, because it was well documented that the human survival instinct declared soulmates as necessary to their survival - like air.

James hadn't given a lot of thought to meeting his soulmate - had figured that was something he was likely to check off when he was sixty (because if Steve wasn't his soulmate, he didn't have a use for soulmates - not that he's not glad that Steve met the legendary miss Carter, but -) in a retirement home for spys or something.

Or, okay, maybe he had a few flights of fancy about meeting them abroad and sweeping them off their feet because _spys_. It always seemed awful dashing in movies.

God he hoped no one would find out that at _thirty_ he was still fantasizing about being dashing.

There'd been nothing dashing about cracking a guy's head open and slicing another's throat, arterial spray going all over his soulmate. James allowed himself a moment of weakness to savor the fact that during their escape, when the goddamned gun jammed, his soulmate had come up with another one, firing with shocking accuracy. Defensive shots, every last one; James aimed to _kill_ , his soulmate aimed to disable - legs, arms, and wild shots at light fixtures and jars and cans to startle the enemy into ducking.

It took skill to make a kill shot in the middle of a gunfight, but it took skill to aim nonlethal, too, and hit a target while on the run. Of course, his soulmate _designed weapons_. It was probably natural that he understood how to use them.

"Yeah," Steve said, exasperated, "but your soulmate's _not_."

"Ah," James said, because he realized abruptly this had less to do with the location of James' soulmate and more to do with the location of _Steve's_ soulmate. He and Carter really were meant to be, because they both stubbornly refused to stop serving their countries and wouldn't ask the other to, either. Thus, Steve continued to look after the USA's interests at SHIELD, and Agent Carter did the same for England.

"Don't 'ah' me, you jerk," he said crankily. "You're the one that's been moping since you got back."

"If I _were_ moping, I was doing it by myself until you barged into my room," he pointed out, then "not that I was moping."

Steve ignored the correction because they both know he was lying. "Not much of a room," he pointed out, no less displeased. "They gave _your_ room away as soon as you left on that assignment."

Alright, so maybe he has been neglecting his friend, whatever. Steve neglected him, too, when he first found Carter; James was owed a bit of time to adjust to the fact that his brain was insisting he had a whole new, independent limb with no self-preservation instincts.

( _Lies_ . His soulmate has _insane_ self-preservation instincts, they just didn't work like normal people's. Like James' protective instincts didn't work like other people's, because while the threat still _breathed_ it was still a threat.)

"It's just temporary until I get an apartment," James pointed out, because the room - well, it was pretty terrible. Barren. Soulless. Standard fair for a returning agent before they'd get back on their feet. Allegedly. Agent Barton was still living in his and has been since he'd given James orientation three years ago.

"So you're quitting," Steve said, like he was a jealous girlfriend or something.

"I'm not quitting," James griped. "I'm on leave - _mandatory_ leave. Cos my brain fucking rewrote itself, asshole."

"Right," he said, relenting just slightly with a huff. Steve had been all kinds of thrilled when he imprinted on Carter; James had been thrilled, too, because at the time he'd mistakenly thought that Carter was going to take over for him, and surprisingly, he'd actually _trusted_ her to do a good job.

Only Steve and Miss Carter were patriotic _idiots_.

"Look," James sighed, also relenting, "just - just let me figure out this - whole -"

"Imprinting on Tony Stark?" Steve asked dryly.

James twitched slightly. At the time, he'd been grateful for the familiarity of the name and the (bare) face of his soulmate. Now back on American soil, he was starting to get twitchy about the whole _familiarity of that face to everyone_. "Yeah, that," he said. "Give me a few days to work this out, and I'll give you a call, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Steve said reluctantly. "It's not like I haven't seen you for three years or anything."

James put the pen down with a snap, spun the chair around and stood. "Okay," he said, "that's it. To the gym. We're settling this on the floor, Rogers."

Steve looked pleased for an instant before he cast a doubtful look at James' prosthetic arm. Most of the time, James forgot that it wasn't just a part of him, hadn't been a part of him _forever_ \- did, until someone took obvious notice of it - and Steve hadn't been there when he'd lost the arm, gained this one. It was still new to Steve, and James clenched it, listening to the gratifying sound of the hydraulics and the gentle burr of gears shifting - well, _felt_ more than heard.

(" _Where in the hell did you get that_ " and " _wouldn't you like to know_ ")

"Trust me," James said, and the 'r' growled and the 'u' drawled, "the arm works fine."

Steve hesitated for just a second longer, and then he grinned cautiously. "Alright, let's find out."

\--

James was met just inside the lobby by perhaps the most striking woman he'd ever seen. Not the most gorgeous, although she was definitely a looker. He'd seen more than his fair share of lovely women while overseas - lovely, vicious, broken women, like mosaics with the pieces on their sides, pointing up to slice open unwary feet. This lovely lady reminded him more of well-fed tiger.

"Hello," she said, and smiled at him in a way that made him want to cover his jugular, "you must be James Barnes."

It felt incredibly weird to hear his real name said by a stranger, a bit like he'd been striped of something important. The smile came bright and entirely artificial to his face. "Yeah, that's me," he said, too broad, too Brooklyn (his accent hadn't been that strong - maybe ever). "And you -" And then he remembered who she was, because _yes of course_ he'd done his research, would have even if SHIELD hadn't given him an entire thick, overflowing file. "You are the CEO of Stark Industries," he finished, smile a little brittle.

Stark had given over the reigns to the company just a year and a half ago, and there'd been noise about an engagement or something, but Miss Potts wasn't wearing a ring, and - and it was almost impossible for two unimprinted people to get married anyway.

It didn't escape James that Stark was imprinted, now, and his girlfriend had come to meet him at the door. He wondered if this was about to be a very short visit and the whole - _thing_ \- with imprinting on Tony Fucking Stark was going to be over before he could really figure out how he felt about it all.

The smile on Miss Potts' face somehow managed to get wider and even more threatening, standing there in her heels and skirt and business jacket and long, straight hair the color of oranges. Maybe not a perfect match for _Tony Stark_ but probably the closest thing on Earth. "That's correct," she said lightly, tilting her head. "You've done your homework."

He strengthened his brittle grin, smoothed it over his teeth; SHIELD had needed his awkwardness, but Ana used to whisper into his ear, chide and approve in turns as he learned to become one face or another. "So did you," he said, matching her tone.

Miss Potts kept smiling, and her eyes were like steel.

Before anything further could be said or happen, the doors at the end of the lobby opened and out - well, _tumbled_ Tony Stark, in the same graceless/graceful flail that he'd used to maneuver through the fucking gunfight, bruised and bloodied with a gun in hand and shaking fingers. The effect was rather immediate, even though at that distance James couldn't _sense_ him - his fingertips began to tingle, his heart rate increased, and a stupid level of brightness flooded him like someone had aimed a searchlight at his soul.

Stark's ( _Tony's_ ) eyes fixed on him for a split second before swiveling over to Potts. "Pepper," Stark said, bright with a too-tight smile, sweeping across the lobby (James could sense him then, a sudden _weird_ knowledge, like knowing where his hand was) to arrive at her side, clasping his hands together. "What are you doing here," he asked, mild and low and through clenched teeth.

Potts gave him a look like he should know _exactly_ what she was doing there, then flickered her eyes down for a moment. By the time she looked up, she was the definition of professionalism. "Making sure you're taking your mandatory leave," she said mildly, and smiled politely.

"Well, I am," he said promptly. "Taking the mandatory leave you're forcing on me. See me, respecting you as CEO here?"

"I don't need you to respect me as CEO here - right at this moment, anyway," she said, her smile unchanging, her eyes harder than steel, "I need you to respect me as your friend."

Tony looked at her a bit like he didn't understand what the hell it was she was saying. Oh grand, James thought, here was another one. Thank god he'd already had training for this, although at least Steve tended to know that people were actually trying to look out for his best interest.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case there's any question, Ana is most definitely Natasha, who was acting as James' handler.


	4. Soulmate Psychosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's been excusing Steve's behavior with the understanding that Bucky is Steve's soulmate. 
> 
> He's never been so entirely wrong in his life when in the middle of CACW, he imprints on an escaping Winter Soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> violent and gorey imagery and references; Tony losing the entire fucking plot. Listen. When you are literally sociopathic when it comes to your soulmate, bad things happen sometimes.
> 
> No bad things actually take place in the story, but they are discussed in narrative.

* * *

 

Tony's been operating under a bit of an _assumption_ this entire time, you see. He thinks it's a pretty natural one - it's one that makes _sense._

Tony Stark meets Steve Rogers and immediately discovers the guy is a bit of an ass. At the time, he's not entirely bothered by it (no, that's a lie: Tony is entirely _too_ bothered by it, and so immediately he defensively justifies - ); he snaps back with sharp words in turn without even thinking about it. Captain America hasn't exactly been awake for very long. He's lost everything, awkward and archaic. Of course he's going to be _a bit cranky_.

First impressions are hard to shake though - the shaky, relieved smile that Rogers gives him aside, Tony and Rogers just can't seem to get on the same wavelength unless there's imminent mortal danger. It's like they're magnets of identical polarity; no matter how hard you shove them together, they naturally repel.

Eventually their itsy bitsy spider butts in enough to start playing the part of Rogers' handler, more or less - presumably because Tony is easier to manipulate into playing along and he doesn't precisely trust her enough to deal with her face-to-face for longer than a few days at a time. Tony's not _happy_ about this development, but he has his own problems to deal with. He doesn't trust Natasha and her agendas, but dealing with her would require about ninety percent more of his attention than he has to spare for the Avengers when people are trying to _kill him._

Natasha does take her mission as Rogers' handler pretty seriously though. The two of them fucking _destroy_ SHIELD because it's been infiltrated by HYDRA for who knows how long. Tony thinks it's a bit like amputating an entire limb thanks to some gangrene in the digits, but no one asks him. Natasha takes her job seriously, so that's why she takes special effort to point out _James Barnes,_ alias _The Winter Soldier._ She kind of has to, with the way Rogers has completely lost the plot.

So Tony makes some assumptions, right? With this variable in play, things make more sense. If Bucky Barnes was Steve Rogers' _soulmate_ this entire time, then no wonder Rogers lost the plot and took off after him during the War. No wonder he was a mean, spiteful sonuvabitch when he woke up in this century. No wonder Natasha's report suggested that Rogers had been about to let a HYDRA assassin fucking kill him if he had to.

Tony really isn't one to complain about others' self destructive tendencies, and he would have been satisfied with the explanation either ways, but - soulmates would have tied that up in a neat bow.

At some point in time, because Natasha likes to stick knives in places and _twist them_ , she starts poking and prodding him about Howard and Maria. It's not really all that weird. Presumably, a lot of people know that Tony has daddy issues the size of the Milky Way. She never quite does it in a way that makes him break his composure and tell her to _go fuck herself_ , but he knows she must be doing it for a reason. When it comes to a point of either dealing with it or start drinking, Tony actually puts out the effort to figure out what she's up to and comes up with _traumatized, brainwashed super soldier assassin._

Alright, fine, whatever. After Ultron, he can't imagine that Rogers will allow him or his tech within a hundred meters of his POW boyfriend, but now that he has the thought in mind: it's a good one. It could help people. Tony is in the business of trying to _help_ people now - not protecting them, since even when he does _that_ , he still ends up hurting them. So: helping it is. He designs BARF. He chooses that acronym because when he tests BARF (on himself, of course, just like Iron Man), it makes him want to barf. In various ways: physically, emotionally. Just. All kinds of fun.

The Accords - well. The Accords start really getting pushed through. Tony's been aware of them since he became Iron Man and the US government tried to demand his suits and the UN was getting nervous about him galavanting around the Middle East. The only thing that kept them from getting advanced beyond the writing stage was that once Tony was satisfied he had most of his weapons back, he stopped leaving the United States.

Fucking up _this_ badly overseas would of course push the issue. Rogers sucks at diplomacy, but at least Natasha is there, trying to mediate; Tony doesn't know if she _actually_ agrees with the Accords or just agrees that Tony's way of handling it is better than Rogers'. Frankly, Tony doesn't agree all that much with the Accords himself, at least not in their current state, but anyone who pays attention to corporations and the government know about passing 'feel-good' regulations. It's the placebo of paperwork.

At least half of the Accords are being pushed through because of the government, but at least some of it is the civilians looking for a scapegoat, and the rest is looking for a security blanket. It's a seize at control. Even if that control was just a fiction, it would help the citizens of the world sleep at night - like lavender scented water in a squirtbottle with a handmade label: monster repellant.

-0-

Tony is still willing to do what he has to when Steve Fucking Rogers breaks the goddamned law and goes after his buddy, Bucky Barnes. It's frustrating - infuriating. He knows that Rogers isn't operating with his head in the _least_ \- this is too panicked, too desperate. Tony is trying, doing his best to keep Thaddeus Ross at bay, when this all could have gone smoother if Rogers would have just _filled him in._

The problem, Tony thinks, his heart palpitating and his hands shaking, is that Rogers doesn't trust him at all. At least not where it comes to his soulmate. Which: _fine._ Tony used to work hand-in-hand with the military. He was always going to, given SI's production lines and Howard's legacy, but becoming friends with Rhodey means that Tony gets well and thoroughly familiar with the military culture. Even though Tony's never given much thought about soulmates himself, he's familiar with the phenomena. He can understand that trusting someone else with your soulmate isn't easy - especially one you thought you lost. Despite the whole culture of the military, and all the training soldiers receive - they still get incredibly tetchy about their soulmates.

There's a weird energy vibrating through Tony's skin as he tries to salvage the situation. If he can just save Rogers' stupid soulmate, he might be able to fold Rogers back into the team. He's not liking the look of things as they are. If Cap goes AWOL, this flimsy little charade they have will all come tumbling down.

Rogers seems set 100% on making it all come down, though. Tony thinks in retrospect that a grand fucking gesture like bringing out FDR's pens was a bad step. He'd meant for it to be symbolic, though. A bit of history. He always forgets that other people don't see things like he sees things, and Rogers, having lived during that time, might have his own personal opinions on the matter.

Or maybe the shitfuck was just looking for a fight and didn't care where he had to get it from. _Really._ Wanda? That's the step too far? The fact that Tony blatantly said, straight to his face, that the Accords were the best way to get his soulmate back to _American_ soil and not hung and quartered overseas - that didn't outweigh Wanda being under house arrest until the media was under control? _House arrest._ With companionship! It's not even like they're really holding her against her will.

If Wanda wanted to forget about being an Avenger and fuck right off, Tony would be just as equally happy about it, and as long as she kept her powers to herself, he wouldn't even want to hunt her down. But being an Avenger meant house arrest until the civilian masses got accustomed to the idea of a freaking _witch_ being on their team. As far as Tony knew, Wanda understood and respected that. Rogers' reaction is - troubling.

Tony's hands are already shaking, his breath coming too fast, when the alarms go off.

-0-

Natasha finds him posthaste, confirming what Tony already suspected: Rogers' boyfriend is the cause. Tony doesn't _think_ Rogers is trying to break Barnes out, because surely even _he_ isn't that suicidal. That means either Barnes himself is trying to escape or someone is trying to make off with him.

"Please tell me you have a suit," Natasha says.

Tony feels like he's going to vibrate out of his skin. His chest is aching like it's going to collapse - not inward, but outward, like a rope tied around his breastbone is being yanked; despite Extremis, his chest has never fully recovered from the arc reactor. According to scans and the one doctor he consulted, it's psychological. He feels like he's going to be sick, spitting out something to Natasha about the fact that he's no longer _active duty._

He and Natasha don't need Carter Junior's help to head in the right direction, but it does get them to exactly where Barnes is faster; asking for directions would have definitely slowed them down. Tony feels a bit like a clockwork toy, something inside him coiling tighter and tighter. If he weren't so familiar with panic attacks, he thinks he'd mistake what he's feeling right now for exactly that.

"I'll go first," Tony tells them. "Test the waters and see how Agent Bourgignon feels about civilians."

"I'm thinking 'wet paper bag,'" Natasha says helpfully.

"Don't get killed just to piss Steve off," Carter Junior says.

Tony isn't sure _what_ he expected from Rogers' girlfriend, honestly, but he's not exactly surprised. He splits from the two of them, sneaking around for an open shot at the man in the soft red sweater - good tastes - that won't involve collateral damage. This gauntlet isn't capable of deadly force, but people are surprisingly fragile and easy to kill and it's better, overall, not to take chances. Every nerve in his body is buzzing in a very distracting way - like his body itself has become an arc reactor. He tastes coconut. It's definitely psychological.

It's luck that by the time Tony finds the right angle and gets his glove activated, he's in time to save the life of one of the agents trying to stop Barnes. Tony fires his repulsor toward Barnes's center of mass. It was never meant to be fired from so far away, the force of it mostly dissipated by the time it strikes the lunatic, but it's enough to distract him. Tony's always been a great distraction. He feels vaguely like he's a brass bell that's been struck by a hammer, or Mjolnir and the shield, lurching to his feet. Barnes still has the gun. He has to get it out of Barnes' hands.

Barnes is recovering and Tony's lifting his hand to fire a warning shot when the ringing throughout his body slams into his head with the force of 210 petajoules.

-0-

In the wake of everything that was Tony Stark getting instantly flattened to the ground - vaporized, reduced to atoms and shadows - an instant stretches out into eternity. Tony's lurch to his feet turns into a lame limp. Barnes, turning his attention on the new threat, doublesteps and sways. There's a good thirty to thirty-five feet between them, but it's enough. The atoms and heat energy reassemble themselves in new and terrifying ways and Tony's pounding heart thumps with renewed vigor against the bone with that rope tied around it, dragging him forward.

Eternity shatters as the last bit of Tony, rebuilt, snaps into place.

Barnes pivots and vomits onto the floor, gripping at the nearest table. Although his entire body arches with the force of it, not a lot comes out - thin and sour. He's shaking. Tony is beside him before he registers moving, hand clamping down on the arm bracing him against the table. His skin is chilled. Tony swallows, but his mouth and throat are dry.

If Rogers has a soulmate, it's not Barnes, that's for sure.

Natasha and Carter Junior arrive on the scene and Tony's still not thinking when his hand snaps up to aim at Carter Junior. Barnes' left arm suddenly clamps around Tony's waist, his shoulder digging into Tony's stomach.

" _Shit,_ " Natasha says, her eyes sweeping over them. Her stances is still neutral enough that Tony feels no hesitation in powering up his repulsor at Carter Junior when she makes to move toward the two of them. Natasha gets an arm in front of her immediately, pushing her back.  "Wait," she snaps. It's just enough that Tony doesn't fire. His heart is still hammering out of control, his breath shallow and quick.

"Wait for what?" Carter demands tensely, cutting Natasha a sharp look.

Natasha obviously doesn't want to look away from Tony and Barnes, but her gaze flickers sideways all the same. "Code God Killer," she says.

"What the fuck is that," she says, sounding like she'd rather not know.

The unforgiving clamp of Barnes' left arm doesn't budge, but he straightens slightly, heaving himself upright enough that he and Tony are left looking over one another's shoulders. Any higher will bump Tony's arm and knock his aim askew. Despite everything, the gun is still grasped in his right hand. This would normally upset Tony and make him nervous. Tony is not nervous in the least bit right in this moment, tension keeping his gauntlet utterly still where it's aimed at Carter Junior's face.

Because he knows it'll achieve his aim, he says: "Plato's Symposium. Specifically the part where humanity threatens the gods, so the gods split all of humanity in two."

Everyone knows that story. Carter Junior stares at him for a long moment, then glances down at the red clothed form curled into Tony's personal space. It isn't something she can argue with, or deny, or reason with. Tony should know. If it were possible, he would - logically. Rationally. Tony knows, coldly, that he'll have all kinds of thoughts about this when he's capable of having them, but for now there's only the fact that Barnes may as well be the arc reactor in his chest keeping shrapnel from shredding his heart apart. Tony doesn't even have the arc reactor anymore, but it's precisely that feeling - something grafted into the core of him that's keeping him alive no matter how he feels about it.

"You're _kidding,_ " Carter Junior says with the kind of disgusted disbelief you'd normally hear from teenagers being introduced to Mom or Dad's new squeeze. Barnes shakes and quivers against him, his breath just half a beat shy of hyperventilating. Possibly the drive to keep Tony alive is the only thing preventing him from launching directly into a panic attack the likes of which would impress even Tony.

Tony's free hand fumbles along Barnes' arm to his side, where he presses rhythmically, hushing Barnes with not even half of his attention. "I mean, I agree," he rambles, "this - this is also my favorite time and place to meet m- my soulmate: on foreign soil, having committed an unknown number of crimes including terrorism, with an unknown but doubtlessly incredible body count that could increase _exponentially_ within the next few hours to a week." Panic rattles through him, hard like it's going to shatter his bones against themselves.

"I don't do that anymore," Barnes rasps against Tony's shoulder.

" _Oh, don't you,_ " Tony says bitingly, not even bothering to try taking a look at his face. "It's not just _you_ I'm thinking about."

"No," he says again. The clamp of his metal arm pushes the shifting plates against Tony's spine. "Vienna. I didn't do that."

"I don't care," Tony says, which is actually just Tony in the grips of Soulmate Psychosis. Tony should care. Tony _did_ care, thirty minutes ago. Tony, sick from BARF and distracted with his Iron Man HUD, furious and anxious and feeling his hands flex for want of an Iron Man gauntlet just to put it in Roger's face, regardless of his assumption that Rogers was being like this because Barnes was his _soulmate - that_ Tony cared.

But _that_ Tony had been vaporized and the Tony that stood here in the now only cares about Vienna inasmuch as there's a man with vibranium claws right here in this very building that would like to peel the skin off Barnes' face.

"You should," Barnes says. His words are steady now, but the arm keeps whirling, the plates shifting against Tony's back, and he trembles, hunched over to press in close while keeping his bulk from disrupting Tony's aim. "They came for me."

" _Stark,_ " Natasha says suddenly, crackling bright.

Yes, Tony was capable of understanding and adjusting to information just as quickly. You don't miniaturize an arc reactor or force strange elements into being with the barest hints by being _slow._ 'They' can only mean one thing, and every cell - every atom - everything that Tony was and is and will be - simply says: _no._ _They_ will not have him.

Kingdoms and countries have fallen for less. It's not so difficult to fathom that Tony will simply burn the world if he must. He already has no answer for the threat from the Void. What is a few years early?

Speaking of men with vibranium claws.

Tony is still in the moments between heartbeats, on the tail end of the click with which Natasha says 'Stark', when Barnes' arm suddenly dips down around his thighs and lifts Tony off the ground. T'Challa has arrived, he can see, barely managing to stay upright and not slung over super soldier shoulder. It's Barnes' left shoulder, which is awful - left is also where Tony wears the glove. Barnes is twisting, backstepping rapidly even as he turns his right side on the intruder and fires the gun. Tony twists just in time to see T'Challa duck under Barnes' aim and sweep his leg up, kicking the gun out of his hand.

"T'Challa! Wait!" Natasha says, but men on revenge sprees wait for no rationale. Barnes effortlessly handles the addition of Tony's weight on his left side, dodging backwards and snatching up a chair to fend T'Challa's attacks off. In any other situation, Tony would make a crack about lion tamers; in this one, he gets just enough time to steady himself on Barnes' shoulder and blast Wakanda's Prince-King in the chest with his repulsor. It's only slightly more effective on T'Challa than Barnes, the man rolling with the force and landing on his feet.

Tony looks straight into the eyes of a man recategorizing him from 'collateral damage' to 'enemy combatant.' That would normally be upsetting to Tony, he thinks, but T'Challa's actions have already put him firmly in the enemy combatant category on Tony's side, so really all was fair.

He's vaguely aware of Carter Junior cursing, moving to - What? Maybe set up a perimeter, given she was moving in the direction T'Challa came from, the same direction the three of them had come from. Barnes swings Tony down from his shoulder in what feels ridiculously like a ballroom move; Tony lands light and quick. He's trained in ballroom dancing.

Other than that, just as with Barnes, his brain is working in overdrive, releasing chemicals into his body that the super soldier serum has replicated. Tony feels like he could march on an entire army - five armies - seven armies, even. Some distant voice analyzes Soulmate Psychosis as an amazing drug.

In a week's time, Tony's going to be _thrilled_ if they keep the body count down to zero, he knows this - abstractly. Like knowing that the core of the earth is molten. Alright. Nice. Who _cares?_ Of course _Tony_ will, in a weeks time, when this whole soulmate imprinting process finishes up, but literally nothing matters right now other than his soulmate and the awful things Tony is willing to do to keep him.

Natasha, intelligently, hasn't moved an inch from where she is standing clear of them, which is nice. Good. Not enough for Tony to trust her, of course. He doesn't trust anyone. He doesn't even trust Barnes. Barnes might have some funny ideas about good ways to keep Tony alive, and Tony doesn't have the patience for that. Tony can't be entirely sure how Barnes' training feels about having him as an irreplaceable limb. Tony's 'peers' think he's a dangerous loose cannon ready to explode at best, a thug at worst - but Rhodey is constantly on him about how his Iron Man suit and boxing lessons and gunmanship aside, he's _just a civilian._

Barnes is the Winter Soldier and he's just been spooked by both HYDRA and Rogers. There's no predicting what lengths he might go to for Tony, against Tony's wishes and the wishes of his Psychosis. Tony will regret if he comes out of it a week later to a soulmate with no arms and legs, for example. He would also like to keep his own.

Though T'Challa must have no idea what's going on, he's been reassessing the situation, and Barnes hasn't moved against him yet, which - good. Barnes is able to understand neutrality. Not that T'Challa is neutral. His impassive expression still somehow speaks _loudly_ of premeditated murder.

Tony realizes there's a smile on his own face. "T'Challa, buddy," Tony says. "I'd love to see you at the end of this week, still alive, preferably, but for that to happen, me and Bucky Barnes here really, _really,_ need you to do us a favor - one little itty-bitty favor. You can do us a favor, right? Or well. Me. Do me a favor. I get you wanna kill this guy, but then I'd have to kill you and that'd be - _bad._ "

T'Challa lasers Barnes with his eyes for a few more moments, but Barnes is well and truly stalled out, tense but not attacking or trying to escape. He glances at Tony - once, only quickly, judging Barnes' reaction, then a second time when Barnes doesn't react, taking in the repulsor aimed at him and how Tony is turned carefully to keep the widest view open of the entire room, half a twitch from aiming at anyone and everyone except for Barnes.

Despite the impossibility of it, T'Challa seems to accurately read the situation. "You jest," he accuses flatly. His face is still impassive. He still looks a second from taking Barnes' face off.

"I can see why you'd think that," Tony says, "because there are endless jokes here, to be made, today, regarding _this_ of all things. I promise you, there are just - so many jokes. Loki is cackling himself to sleep at the moment. You know Loki? Crazy guy, horned helmet, wears green? You know, maybe you're more familiar with the giant flying alien ships -"

"We all wish it were a joke," Natasha cuts in, trying to bring the situation back under control before Tony can spin it right out the window of a Quinjet. "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be. And I think," she says, slow and careful, "that attacking Iron Man, and the Winter Soldier, right after they've imprinted… would be a bad idea."

 _There's_ the joke, Tony thinks, even as T'Challa looks between he and Barnes for one more long moment. There it is. Tony's been thinking about Barnes in terms of the Winter Soldier, with Rogers' connection to him on the back stove this whole time. Rogers says 'Bucky' so Tony thinks: _brainwashed assassin._ Natasha says 'Winter Soldier' and Tony thinks: _a person._

But Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, isn't just a person: he's _Tony's_ person, Tony's other half, but not like they're left, or right, but like they'd always been one singular individual that had been violently pulled apart and left with only some of the traits of the original, fumbling around lost and trying to fill in the empty spaces with behaviors and traits that never quite _fit._ They aren't Tony and Bucky. They're tonyandbucky.

He often wants to punch Rogers' perfect teeth in, but he thinks Rogers will be perfectly happy to return the favor in this case.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **an additional scene**  
>  "Hey, hey, hey," Tony says, dipping a little to the side to fall into his line of sight. Barnes looks straight through him. "Buck. Bucko. Buckaroo. Buckarino." Tony has two hands full of weaponry and a lot less knowledge of what might set Barnes off than he'd like. His soulmate. A traumatized, brainwashed assassin. Touching him is probably an awful idea, and yet - Tony wants to. That's the imprinting though, probably. Maybe a little bit the fact that Tony recognizes that expression too well - in a world where they aren't soulmates, he's not sure what kind of reaction it would have prompted out of him. 
> 
> If anyone will be safe to get near Barnes like this, it might be Tony. People have killed their own soulmates before, despite the fact that the human brain categorizes them as essential to their survival. People commit suicide all the time. On average in the United States alone, someone kills themselves every ten to fifteen minutes. 
> 
> Tony banks on the fact that they're still imprinting to step closer, to lower his voice and use the same intimate tones he's used to use with Pepper to say: "Hey. I'm not going to let anyone do that thing - whatever it is - to you again, okay? It's not going to happen. So god help me, if they lay a finger on you, they will see what happens when Tony Stark means to build a murderbot."
> 
> That's - not good. Tony knows that's not good, and he knows it's not good that he means it, soulmate psychosis or no; the fact that he knows it's not good doesn't particularly bother him at the moment. He might still mean it in a week. 
> 
> But maybe Barnes is more like Pepper and something like that will freak him out, brainwashed assassin and all that, so Tony easily amends, "or no murderbots, if you hate murderbots - do you hate murderbots? It doesn't have to be murderbots, it can be search and destroy, I had a thing with the Iron Legion, no casualties necessary, whatever," he waves the matter aside with a jerk of his hand. The repulsor glove flashes. "I'm not usually this bloodthirsty, but we are talking about HYDRA and crimes against humanity and I'm pretty sure I can spin the hell out of whatever I need to do even after all this Accords bullshit."
> 
> * * *
> 
> I held onto this one for a long time - I think it was like the second one I started after getting back into winteriron? but it just never seemed to go anywhere.


	6. abandoned base, b/t

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically speaking, Tony isn't even supposed to be in any abandoned maybe-Hydra maybe-some-other-secret-paramilitary-organization-trying-to-take-over-the-world/destroy-it bases anymore. He's a noncombatant for the foreseeable future, because that's the kind of shit that happens when some of your flashback triggers are your own teammates.  
> \--  
> while investigating an abandoned base, Tony and Bucky end up stuck in a hole in the floor and getting out of it isn't as easy as it should be with one genius and one swiss army knife man.

Technically speaking, Tony isn't even  _ supposed _ to be in any abandoned maybe-Hydra maybe-some-other-secret-paramilitary-organization-trying-to-take-over-the-world/destroy-it bases anymore. He's a noncombatant for the foreseeable future, because that's the kind of shit that happens when some of your flashback triggers are your own teammates. He can't be in the same room as both Rogers and Barnes without his blood pressure shooting through the roof, and if he happens to be in an Iron Man suit, he actually has to sedate himself. 

God, he used to feel  _ safe _ in his armor, even after everything. These days he's better at faking cool around them without it, and better one or the other and not both. Just don't face either one directly, don't let Barnes near his chest or Rogers near his face and he's at least able to pretend at sanity with enough cutting words and fancy gestures. It's a work in progress. 

Tony has had as little to do with the rogues as he's been able to justify since they came back to the States, but this isn't the first mission he's ended up on with them regardless of his state as a noncombatant. At least it's just Barnes and Natasha - Barnes doesn't say one word or even look at Tony if he can help it, and Natasha won't say anything that'll set him off unless she really needs to. He could probably  _ tolerate _ having the suit at this time, except that the mission parameters had made that impossible. He has his repulsor glove and the Shield Breaker, of course, but that had been the maximum of what he'd been able to smuggle in - things that could be activated with a button rather than a signal that could be traced. 

"This place is probably older than both of you put together," Tony observes, padding after America's Favorite Turncoats. Well, that's not accurate - Barnes never really was a turncoat, so much as he finally came  _ back _ \- either of the times. Both of them. He gets that Barnes had been looking for sanctuary Tony hadn't known to offer because no one was giving him all the information. Still. 

"Cute," Natasha says dryly. 

A lot of their teammates had a lot of things to say about the three of them being shoved together on this mission, but the fact of the matter is - Tony is great at intrapersonal redirection  _ right in front of someone's face _ , and Natasha and Barnes are the best at smuggling themselves into places. Sure, everyone knew that Tony Stark was Iron Man, and a genius, and a giant pain in the ass - but they still kept underestimating him. Tony wants to cry sometimes about the fact that even Super Spy Black Widow underestimates him from time to time. Or maybe her game is so good she just  _ makes _ Tony think she's underestimated him. It's the escher painting of trust issues. Whatever. 

Barnes says a whole lot of nothing, but he usually doesn't when they poke at his trauma too hard by sending him on infiltration missions. He's a solid mass of murder right now, and Tony's sticking to his heels because he's 90% less likely to 'accidentally' kick Tony in the head before choking someone with his thighs. Although he definitely could choke someone with those. He could absolutely. It's just his more favorite method is a punch to the throat. 

This is really only the second time that Tony's found himself sticking close like this. When Barnes is in his Soldier mode, he has a way of moving that once triggered a dazed Tony's habit from back when the biggest threat to him were stalkers and anti-war extremists and Happy was more than happy to one-hit KO them. It had worked out beautifully at the time, and Tony's banking on that right now. 

His glove and the Shield Breaker are  _ good _ , but they're not a suit. 

"I can't believe they're still using this place," Tony continues, because he's right on both accounts. It's impossible for this lab to be older than WWI, but it  _ feels _ like it, it's been so poorly maintained - poorly constructed in the first place, honestly. If they'd at least built it in a cave, it might have held up better. Not that he's honestly complaining about that. It's dank and dark enough as it was that Tony's just glad it's not cold. 

But the bunker had definitely been in use: there's electricity and computers being run on that electricity - but it's all brutal blunt-forced design - cables showing, wires twisted, more computational power than they should probably need for anything down here - the things that  _ Tony _ could do with that kind of power included running an AI almost as complex as FRIDAY. It offends Tony's aesthetics about as much as HYDRA's Winter Soldier does, compared to the  _ Avenger's _ Soldier, buckled up in flexible body armor, matte and chrome. Tech shouldn't just be able to do it's job - it should do it's job  _ elegantly _ . There's not been a single time that Tony's ever blunt-forced tech and left its guts hanging out. He has pride, you know. 

"Not everyone can be billionaire philanthropists," Natasha says mildly. 

"Three words: Hidden Nazi Gold," he says. 

Natasha tilts her head. "You do your thing," she says. "I'll search the rest of the place. Don't let him out of your sight, Bucky." 

Barnes levels Natasha a look but doesn't argue. No matter what his personal feelings are toward Tony, he'll play along. No matter what Tony's personal feelings toward Barnes are, he's okay with those orders, if not being treated like a problem child. If Tony can't have Rhodey coming for him, his second choice by miles would be Barnes. 

"I am slightly less breakable these days," Tony complains even as he edges around Barnes to get to the computer. 

"Still," Natasha says, neat and clean; she doesn't disagree. She might even know exactly what Tony did to himself in order to be less breakable at fifty than forty. "You'll find too much trouble if left to wander around unattended." 

"You are not wrong," he admits. Good god, they're using keyboards as the main input.  _ Keyboards. _ Ugh. 

\--

Tony's at it for long enough to become a little comfortable, if only because he's so frustrated. Their security is so shit that Tony at ten could have cracked it, and he wouldn't have even been familiar with the OS - so that's not the problem. The problem is that they've wiped the data, if not their programs, and they've done a good job of it. It's been pulled completely and all he's been able to do is recover scraps. Not that what the shape of the programs left behind isn't interesting. 

"Well, this was a bust," he mutters with a grimace. "Looks like they were moving shop. Left everything that wasn't essential behind. I'm sure they'll be back for the hardware, since Nat has a point about their limited resources, but-" Tony shrugs; it ripples through his body on a wave of anxiety. "Unless the itsy bitsy spider comes up with something, there's nothing to find here." 

He wheels about, glancing at Barnes. Most of the time he can ignore his teammates, secure that they'll speak up and sass him back, but since this one in particular tends to go nonverbal, a visual check is justified. Both of them seem to be on the same page, so Tony heads for the hallway. He's trying to walk as smoothly as he can, but he's no turncoat agent - he manages to muffle his steps on the metal grating that's layered on the floor, but he's by no means silent. 

Barnes  _ almost _ is, covering Tony's six. It just makes Tony think about what an amazing entrance he could make, stomping on the grating with military precision. That would be some cinematic level theatrics - and as someone constantly aware of presentation and style, Tony could appreciate it. 

"I'm sure you supersoldiers have an inbuilt awareness of time," Tony says, checking his watch. "We're about t-minus eighteen minutes and forty-...six seconds from comm activation. If we don't meet back up with Charlotte before then, of course." 

It's looking like it wouldn't really matter if they activated the comms at all, given that this place has already been stripped of anything useful, but now that they answer to the UN, Tony's at least  _ trying _ to follow SOP, even if it's annoying. He can play by the rules when he  _ has _ to, and given the fact that his and Rogers' heads are on the chopping block for this, he's gotta. 

A lot can happen in thirty minutes, but the general consensus had been that of everyone, the three of them were the most likely to be able to survive, escape, or hinder their captives if caught. Tony has - mixed feelings about that. Putting it mildly. But when humanity itself is on the line, his  _ feelings _ don't matter. 

"This place is a mess," he continues under his breath. The guts of it are just hanging around along the walls, like amateurs electricians put it together. At least put it behind  _ panels _ , Tony thinks grievously. At least make it a  _ challenge _ to figure out where it's all going. "What is with people who have no morals and also no design sense? I mean, I'm hardly any kind of interior decorator, but this is just offensive." 

It's like talking to a brick wall. Tony didn't particularly expect better - again, ever mission Barnes has been on, he tends to clam up, not that he was much better outside of missions. At most, he glowered at Natasha, occasionally made smart remarks to trip Rogers up when Rogers was being particularly -  _ himself _ \- or actually bickering with Wilson. They bitch at each other over the pettiest things - Tony's pretty sure that they're actually fighting over Rogers in the least direct way possible. 

They're going to make friends if they don't watch it. 

"Piece of crap evil lair with this outdated mess," he continues. Rambling: Tony does it. Rhodey says it's a self-soothing thing. He might be onto something. Tony never used to ramble before Afghanistan. Talk over everyone when he'd already predicted their half of the conversation, yes - ramble, no. Not like it matters. If Barnes finds it annoying, who will he really tell, and who will really care? "Iron grating floors -  _ really _ ? Is that seriously the best they could do? There won't even be any secret passages at this rate. Boring. Cheap. A solid three out of ten as far as lairs go. Would not break into again." 

It's pretty classic that that's the time the base tries to kill him. 

\--

That's really giving the base too much credit. When JARVIS or FRIDAY enact certain measures, that  _ could _ be called the Tower trying to kill someone. What actually happens is the shoddy construction and upkeep of the place tries to kill Tony. Human incompetence and laziness try to kill Tony, which is also sadly not entirely a new situation. 

The fact that the iron grate he's standing on gives out beneath him is new. It's like a trap fucking door, and only the way it crumples beneath him in a clumsy flip indicates it wasn't purposeful. Tony barely has a second to slap at the edge of the floor as he drops past it, too fast for his fingers to find purchase, and then he's plunging down past sheer concrete walls. 

Scrapes and bright sparks shower down from overhead, and Tony only has a split second to look upwards to see that Barnes has tumbled in with him, and in the narrow space, has slammed his shoulder and hand against the concrete. Then Tony is plunging into frigid water. 

For several awful minutes, there is nothing. Tony hits the water and that's it - the world ceases to exist. When the world finally jars back into existence, he's sprawled awkwardly with his face shoved into wet hair. There are two bands of compression around his shaking body, but it's enough to let his rational brain claw it's way up through the mind numbing terror. His nails scrabble at woven aramid. Some of his fingertips ache like they've been ripped. 

When he shoves back, he's allowed to go. Tony's head knocks painfully against the cement wall, his breath loud and panicked and raw. It's too dark. He's  _ dying. _ He scrabbles at his arc reactor. He can't feel it.  _ Where is it? _ It's been stolen - it's been ripped out of him again - 

Buttons go flying, and blessed blue light shines out of his chest. His relatively smooth chest, other than the rippling scars and the places where bone won't lay flat anymore, but a circle of blue light shines anyway. There's no metal casing, no dome, but beneath scars and skin, where a false sternum had been bolted in, the light that promises him he'll live continues to shine. 

The rational part of his brain continues to fight against the wild, dying animal in his head. He removed the arc reactor - he no longer needs it to survive. It no longer symbolizes life and living, no longer symbolizes his heart (but it does, it  _ does _ ). This is Extremis, trying to salvage his wet systems by using a placeholder to stop his brain from glitching out. It's given him energy - bioluminescence. He expects light, thinks it's vital to living, and so there is. 

Sadly, it just shines a light on Barnes' face and the stiff, dark scowl on it. An electric flash of pure terror jolts through Tony, of being here in the dark and Barnes' metal fingers  _ digging into his chest to rip it out. _

Shield Breaker activates, undisturbed by the soaking the tech had gotten. Slick metal plates dispatch and unfold from the long pack fitted against his spine, and the two of them are plunged into darkness as the armor wraps itself around his chest, up around his collarbone and throat, down over his ribs and the bare expanse of his stomach. 

It takes two seconds, and then it powers up on the internal supply at the core of the device, illuminating the cramped quarters again. Barnes' murderface has disappeared, which does very little to change the fact that Tony has plastered himself against the far concrete wall, his fingers scraping raw. His breath is too loud, hoarse, and despite the way Shield Breaker presses reassuringly around the fragile bone cage of his ribs, Tony's shaking like his skeleton is trying to wiggle out of his flesh. 

Instead of murder, Barnes' face is as neutral as glass or chrome. He must have dragged Tony out of the water, his back and feet set against the opposite walls to hold the both of them up out of it without effort. Tony himself is twisted awkwardly over super soldier thighs, more or less slung sidesaddle, one foot still dangling into the cold water below. He jerks it up, his shoe scraping uselessly against the opposite wall. His good shoes and his suit are ruined. Nice. 

Rationality continues to work to reassert itself over the stupid animal terror of  _ dying _ . Tony has actually experienced dying before - several times, even. It's never as soul wrecking or heart wrenching as having a fucking panic attack because he's been triggered. For a man whose brain never shuts off, the way the sheer terror, the absolute certainty of  _ death _ against better logic, is the worse experience in the world. 

Extremis has fixed his heart and his lungs, but Tony still arches his back to open his diaphragm further. Barnes, he reminds himself, won't actually murder him down here in a hole after dragging him out of the water. Barnes won't rip his heart out of his chest again - never did in the first place, despite the buckling metal, despite the numbing terror having been the only reason Tony had activated the weapon that was such a ridiculous drain on his suit's resources and took his arm off. 

"Shit," Tony manages through chattering teeth, sore and raw. He really should be past this. Maybe instead of mooning around about that night in December, he should have been using BARF to resolve  _ this _ . Except he knows why he didn't - at the time he'd decided that, December had been less traumatic by far. Tony doesn't want to recreate any aspect of car batteries wired into his chest, shorting out as his head is plunged into water. He doesn't want to recreate any aspect of having the Arc reactor pulled out of it, either. 

"Okay. Okay," he says, scraping his shoe against the wall, shoved up against the cement in a laughable reflection of Barnes; they might as well have been those symmetrical inkblot cards.  _ Now, show me on the spatter where the bad trauma ruined you. _ "Okay, I'm gonna -" Tony wriggles and shifts, trying to escape Barnes' lap. He doesn't get very far, because Barnes grabs him by the hips. 

"Um," he says, pausing to dart a glance down. The lights in Shield Breaker glitters off Barnes' eyes and dripping hair. Glistens on the metal hand that grips him no harder than the human one does. Tony's pretty sure after panicking for his life and especially considering the whom and the circumstances, that shouldn't be doing weird things to his stomach. It's doing weird things to his stomach. Maybe Pepper had been onto something when she accused him of having strange homoerotic tension with his own Iron Man suits. The metal hand is - anyway. It's extremely inappropriate and Barnes' bodyguard tendencies aside, they barely tolerate each other. 

"Your shoes and that armor aren't gonna give you the friction," Barnes says, breaking his prolonged habit of silence on a mission, so apparently Tony flipping the fuck out and requiring rescue from a  _ puddle _ is enough unlike whatever HYDRA made him do that he's capable of it. "Unless you have some kind of grappling hook in your gear, you're not getting up that way." 

"And what do  _ you _ suggest, Bucko," Tony says, barely reining back from snapping. 

The look Barnes gives him is incredibly reminiscent of some of the videos from the 40s Howard had shown him - mostly focused on Captain America, but often with Bucky Barnes somewhere close by in the background of the shot, expression skeptical and wary. Not the sassy kind of look that he's giving Tony right now, but the sudden resemblance is startling. 

"I'll carry you," Barnes says, easy as that. 

Tony gives himself two seconds for the logistics of that, and flatly says: "you're kidding." 

The face he makes suggests that he is not. Okay then. 

Extremis is great for a lot of things - it allows Tony to think quicker, in more directions than before; not that he really needed the help. It allows him to interface with his own tech, and faster than he can through gesture or speech either one - though faster isn't always better, but he's ironing out the kinks. It's kind of like he's his own AI helping him pilot his own body. It's not exactly what he went looking for, but having been driven to the option, he's pretty okay with it. It's kind of neat. 

The only real problem is that Tony has with Extremis is that he hasn't completely ironed out the kinks as far as issuing commands to his armor. The command that deployed Shield Breaker in the first place wasn't a conscious one. When Tony issues a conscious decision to put it away, it doesn't work. If he had a therapist, they'd be having a field day. 

"You can't carry me up out of this pit of despair," Tony says. 

Barnes' fingers press in on his hips in just the barest squeeze, his neutral-ranging-to-premeditated-murder face completely transformed into politely skeptical disbelief. Tony isn't sure where Barnes is getting all this personality and sass from, or more correctly: where he's been hiding it, since he has it on good authority - well, relatively good authority, Natasha-shaped authority, Steve-shaped authority, and FRIDAY, of course, because those two he trusted not to lie to his face especially about  _ Barnes _ not one ounce - that Barnes is mostly passive, mostly reclusive, and mostly mute outside of bickering with Sam. 

"I'm rephrasing that," Tony says, narrowing his eyes at Barnes. "You're  _ not _ carrying me out of this pit of despair." 

Barnes lifts his hands from Tony's person - thank you - and holds them up, leaning back against the opposite wall with his brows arched.  _ And now what? _

And now, Tony was going to - well - 

When Tony got home, he was going to craft up some false soles for the bottom of his shoes, and  _ not a grappling hook, _ he's never needed a grappling hook before, the uses of that kind of tool were much too narrow to bother with. Right now, he has enough traction with his shoes and shoulders that with Barnes taking most of his weight, he's not in danger of falling. The moment he tries taking more weight, though, the traction won't be enough; he'll slip and fall right back into the water. 

"Who even designed this place?" Tony wonders again, sorely. 

It's rhetorical, but Barnes exhales with a hiss. "There's a medical area nearby," he says. "Some things are easier to clean up with hoses. Hasn't been used in a while so far as I could tell, though." 

Tony stares across the cramped, dank space at him, the way his expression has reverted to complete neutrality. He'd already drawn a lot of conclusions - it's what Tony Stark  _ did, _ just to keep his brain from gutting itself: he put himself in other people's shoes. He'd accounted for certain environments, bases, chairs, acoustics, paths of approach, methods of dress, tones of speaking, and elec-fucking-ticity. Somewhere along the line, Tony might have overlooked the whole half of the equation that involved the actual removal of Bucky Barnes' stump. He belatedly expands that to any post-mission surgery that might have been required. Super Serum healing was great until it healed over things inside you that really needed to come out. 

"Yeah, okay," he says, "we need out of here, right now, immediately. Hup hup, soldier." 

Barnes doesn't wait around for gloating, immediately shifting from 'waiting Stark out' to 'soldier on a mission.' Tony palms the wall to steady himself as Barnes shifts his legs wider, his own palms flattening against the wall. "Get astride," Barnes tells him. 

It's such nonsense that it takes Tony a few breaths to determine he isn't under the effects of some nefarious gas either being slowly piped into the base, or leaking out of the cement thanks to the water below them like - asbestos, only even more terrifying somehow. "Excuse me? I - oh, no. No, that's - we're not seriously doing it that way, are we?"

Barnes only stares at him for a moment before lowing one hand to pat at the inside of Tony's right ankle. 

"You're serious," Tony says, and then rolls his eyes. "Of course you're serious. Mysterious reappearance of a personality or not, jokes are - okay. Alright." Not really thinking of it sounds like a grand old idea, but unfortunately for Tony, his brain doesn't work like that, so it immediately provides him with the whole awkward scenario in high definition. Thanks Extremis.  _ He doesn't even like Barnes. _

He doesn't  _ dislike _ Barnes, though, and Tony has also fucked a lot of people he hasn't particularly liked earlier in his life, in his melodramatic quest to actually  _ feel something _ before Responsibility and Regret became the name of the game in '08. Barnes is not even his type. Tony isn't precisely sure what his type even  _ is, _ except he knows it when he sees it, and Barnes is definitely not it. And yet. 

Tony peers down at the water he's been desperately ignoring and it triggers Extremis' HUD, a dozen different measures of just how much Tony would very much like not to go back down there. Shield Breaker doesn't outwardly shift, but it clamps against his ribs all the same. Not enough to restrict his breathing, but bracing him. 

"Okay," Tony says again, a little more breathlessly than he'd like. He presses hard against the wall behind his back and scuffs his left shoe until he's as confident that it has traction as he can be. Softer soles, for sure. Tony can pay for a professional to tack in new soles every once in awhile; he can't afford the kind of trouble buying a therapist would bring. He's still slung awkwardly against Barnes' thigh, but Barnes has opened a cradle between his knees that he'll probably broaden as soon as Tony is in position. 

Tony takes one more moment to remind himself that he would trust  _ Happy _ like this, and Barnes' similarity to Happy was half the reason why he trusted  _ Barnes, _ and so he's doing this. Nothing weird about it. Tony was perfectly capable of sitting in Happy's lap, or Rhodey's lap, in even less dire situations. Okay. 

"Any time you're ready," Barnes says. 

Tony levels a look at him, injecting as much  _ fuck you _ into his expression as possible. "I liked you better when you were playing mute," he says. 

"Get used to missing it." Of the very few faces Barnes' wears, this is something half between old war reels and the one he pulls on Wilson when they're bickering. He peers up the cement shaft, and Tony follows his gaze. Yeah, it might be easier if they had something and could fashion a harness for Tony, but - that's a long way, and Tony doesn't let  _ anyone _ carry his weight. "I'm not scared of you anymore." 

"Wow, and all it took was a wet tshirt contest," Tony says, then: " _ Wait. _ Since when were you scared of me? At all?  _ Ever? _ Me? I mean, the  _ suit: _ yes, of course. But me?" He hasn't even tried killing Barnes since Siberia, not even once. Barnes has actually saved his life on enough occasions that he's way ahead of the rest of the rogues in Tony's books. Tony's even been considering his chances at arguing for making Barnes part of the official Avengers roster. 

"You ever gonna shut up and hop on?" Barnes asks him. 

"I normally prefer dinner, or at least a drink, first, but," Tony says gibly, and uses his complete and utter disbelief that Barnes is now treating him similar to how he treats  _ Wilson _ to plant his left foot against the far wall and sling his right over Barnes' thighs without kneeing himself or kicking Barnes in the face. His shoe slips all the same, but Barnes catches him in the cradle of his legs, and  _ wow, thighs, okay. _

Tony's mostly slept with models and annoyingly attractive and smart scientists or reporters over the years. He's not sure what it is about mortal danger and superheros that cranks his engine but it is definitely cranked. He's on the wrong side of forty with too many times of being ridden hard and put away wet to be cranked this easily. Especially unfortunate is the way his clothing is soaked through, his hips are bracketed by Barnes' knees, and thanks to his feet planted to the wall on either side of  _ Barnes' _ hips, his crotch right there on display. 

"No offense, Stark," Barnes says, apparently unphased by all of this, "but I spent all this time thinking I was living under the Sword of Damocles."

Tony stares at him. He's not pulling the murder face that makes his gaze pitch black, but the lighting is shitty. "Everyone always gets that one wrong," he says, the words spilling out faster than he'd like. "The whole thing about the sword was that it hangs over the head of those in power - that at any tenuous moment, the hair holding it would break and behead the ruler. With great power comes a lot of people who would really like to knock you down a few notches, usually with a b-beheading." His breath hitches tight and panicked, and he shuts his eyes tight as Shield Breaker tightens around him, holding him together. 

"Floating swords make me nervous no matter where they're at," Barnes says. 

"Agreed." Mostly. Except when they're floating over his enemies' heads, but that's neither here nor there. Tony peels his eyes back open and squints at Barnes. "So what? You've suddenly decided I'm  _ not _ just waiting for a moment to randomly let justice or doom fall upon your head?" If it comes out sharp and skeptical, Tony thinks that's justified. After everything he's tried to do and actually done to assure Barnes' safety and general well-being, it's frustrating. Insulting. 

"Sure," Barnes says. "You ready?" 

Tony is very much not ready, especially with that kind of non answer. "Yippie-ki-yay," he says. 

It's a bit like the weirdest three-legged race that Tony's ever been a part of, which considering he's never actually participated in a three-legged race, isn't saying much. It isn't easy, and the first few shuffling steps they make it up the wall are the most awkward. Tony knows how to make a dozen delicate moving pieces move together like a  _ symphony, _ though, and Barnes is no slouch in working in perfect tandem with someone. They make a good few feet up the shaft the unusual strain on his body has Tony's muscles shaking and trembling. 

"Wait, wait," he says, and Barnes does. "Gimme a moment." His lid twitches and Extremis helpfully inserts the HUD into his vision. Unlike the HUD from the Iron Man suit, or his glasses, he doesn't need to flick his eyes one way or another to read or prioritize anything - the HUD doesn't actually exist in visual ranges, despite how his brain interprets it. His body heat is increasing at an unpleasant clip as Extremis bypasses the normal limits on the human body to feed energy into his limbs and core. He'll have to redesign Shield Breaker with venting in mind. 

"Okay," he says, and then they're shuffling up the cement shaft again. 

About half way up, Tony has to call for another halt, bracing his head and hips against the wall. He arches his back as finally,  _ finally, _ Shield Break responds to his commands and dismantles, folding away into the compact harness that runs the length of his spine. His jacket is shredded, since Tony had designed Shield Breaker to close over clothing no matter what shape it was in. Shield Breaker wouldn't be useful if it couldn't close over his chest because it got tangled in  _ cotton. _ He'd ripped his shirt open while he was panicking. It hangs off him, wrinkles pressed into it by the hot steam that had hissed away from his skin when Shield Breaker had cracked open. 

The bioluminescence that had reassured him he was alive earlier is gone, of course. It's just his scarred chest, the awkward angles and planes of badly healed bone and the false sternum. 

"This shirt alone costs $175," Tony muses, picking at it. 

Barnes doesn't offer an opinion, not that Tony is inviting it. Or maybe he is, who knows. He tries closing the shirt over his chest, but while the lower buttons hadn't gotten ripped off, the upper ones had. He'd had it buttoned all the way to his throat, though he'd lost the tie before entering the base. 

If it hadn't been so difficult to get any traction with Shield Breaker, he would have left it deployed. Or no, he couldn't, because the heat was going to overload him like a server, but it would have been nice to.  _ Nice _ being the important word here, because no longer is it necessary. For the moment, at least, Tony is pretty sure Barnes isn't going to dig his heart out of his chest. He is usually pretty sure about that. It's just. The water. Suddenly having Barnes' face close to his chest, in an enemy base. Those kinds of things. They make him forget, sometimes. 

He thinks about Barnes and the Sword of Damocles, which is still wrong as far as an actual allegory - but that hanging sense of doom, like portals and space and  _ much _ colder worlds:  _ that _ he understands all too well. 

"Well, if I'd known you were waiting on a written, signed, and notarized invitation to Truce-ville, I would have sent one," Tony quips. "Personally, I thought that was understood when you came back to America, but Pepper's always told me I shouldn't skip certain necessary steps of human based interaction, but I only skip them because I don't  _ think _ about them, or they're dumb, or cumbersome, and what even  _ are _ normal or necessary steps of human based interaction when it comes to a man out of time, I ask you - you, obviously, being the person in question, should know. Look, I can dance the dance with socialites and scientists no problem, I've been doing that my whole life since I was old enough to hold a smile, but  _ teamwork, _ teamwork is different. Team playing is - no." 

"Whoever told you that is a liar," Bucky Barnes says flatly. "I could have made this work with Steve, maybe, or Natasha. The others? They would have fucked up somewhere. Knocked us right back down the wall." 

It takes a moment of staring at Barnes before Tony realizes that he's playing with the edges of his shirt, tugging and skating along where the buttons used to be. He makes himself stop. "You should  _ really _ consider my sources before dismissing them," he says, rearranging his shirt until it lays flatish. 

Barnes gives him something of an offended look. " _ You _ should consider your sources," he says with a twist to his mouth. "If some jumped up little shit with depression who picks fights by any means necessary 'cause he's got a chip on his shoulder larger than the US of A tells you some stupid shit like that, do everyone a favor and remind him where the actual enemy is." 

"Wow," Tony says, "I love that you immediately assumed it was Rogers." 

"It would explain a lot," he says flatly, "like why he's always after you even though he mopes about it later. Makes it the worst case of pigtail-pulling I've seen him go through." 

"Yeah, that's classified as assault in this century," he shoots back, a bit bewildered. A bit bitter. Now that Barnes has put it in that context, Tony can see it, and that's - that might have made a difference a lifetime ago. These days, there's a reason why Tony keeps his hair cropped as short as he does and it's not because he likes taking time out of his days for the constant appointments with Mark the Stylist. "If he's going to feel bad about it, he could just not do it." 

"You'd think," Barnes says, unimpressed with the sharpness of his tone. "We all make happy, rational decisions, don't we." 

"Point," Tony acknowledges. His own bad decisions are many and varied. Speaking of. "You stop fucking up your arm and let me fix it when it does get dinged up, and I'll play nice with Rogers. The whole - squealing gears and grinding motors hurts me deeply in my soul." 

Barnes looks at him askance, shifting against the cement wall. "No," he says. 

"Oh, come on," he huffs. "What do I have to do? Get a candy dish in my lab to lure you down? Because I'm telling you now, that won't end well, I am a grazer, and if it's candy I'll just end up on a sugar rush and  _ no one _ wants that. If I have to get used to you actually being a human being, you have to do it right and actually not like causing yourself pain. Let me do my thing and make sure the arm is in good working condition." 

An involuntary noise escapes Tony as Barnes shifts under him, his boots scraping against the wall below him. He cuts a glance down into the pitch darkness below, and the flicker of the distant overhead lights on the water. He'd disparagingly thought of it as a 'puddle' earlier, but Tony knows that it has to have been deep or otherwise the distance they had fallen would have broken his leg at the very least. 

"It's all in or all out with you, isn't it," Barnes observes, leaning his head back. It makes him look less like murder and more like an avenging angel, though of the fallen variety, which is just all kinds of not-going-there. It isn't the first time. Barnes likes to hurl himself off things, because anything short of an actual  _ shattered bone _ isn't going to slow him down. Tony remembers that Barnes had fallen behind him earlier. He hopes that Barnes just happened to not catch the lip of the shaft because any other possibility is alarming and unwelcomed. 

"You're one to talk," Tony shoots back, thinking these things. Then, more out of contrariness than truth, says, "and no. Ms Triple Imposter and I have an understanding." 

Narrowing his eyes, Barnes says, "you'd  _ like _ her to think that." He huffs, rolling his eyes skyward for a long, rueful moment. "She doesn't, by the way."

"Rude," he says. "Also untrue. I said it was an understanding. She understands that if necessary, I will throw her under the bus so fast it'll break at least two laws of physics." The words come out sharper than Tony necessary likes, but given the situations, he's allowed. He's lying anyways. Their understanding is much different than that. 

Head still tilted back, Barnes eyes him for a moment before dropping the entire subject. "Not that it ain't fun, but I don't intend to stay stuck down here," he says, shifting his boots again. 

"Fair." Barnes  _ is _ holding both their weights, more or less. The serum is great and all, but even it has its limits. The two of them resume their carefully coordinated wall climbing. The bottom of Tony's shoes must be torn or worn raw by this time, because he slips a lot less. Not that he's really worried about it, because he knows that Barnes will catch him, but he's not sure how well Barnes is holding up. His own body aches, muscles trembling and hot, but Extremis isn't the serum, after all. 

"I'm serious about the arm," he persists, despite barely having the breath to do so with his shoulders and hips pressed so firmly against the wall. If the armor didn't require him to have such a strong core, he probably wouldn't have the breath to talk at all.  "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but sometimes you need to go through things, and it would, frankly, be a waste if you'd died because of something that could have been fixed." 

"Sure," Barnes grunts. "I bet you're real happy to play frisbee with Cap, too."

Well,  _ that _ sucked. "No one's survival is dependant on me playing  _ frisbee, _ " Tony says, and then Barnes' mouth peels open with a snarl that Tony, without having actually ever met the Winter Soldier, knows isn't native to Barnes. "What the fuck," he adds in response, because being this close to Barnes when he snaps seems - bad. 

"You figure out how to keep me out of my head, and I'll let you work on the arm," Barnes says, still baring his teeth and looking just - incredibly unhappy about it. Avenging angel kind of unhappy about it. Raze the earth kind of unhappy about it. " _ No _ candy dishes."

"Not even one?" Tony prods on automatic, because what the fuck. He had realized that the arm isn't a happy topic for Barnes, given the way he abuses it and only brings it to Tony as a last resort when he's fucked it up beyond his physical ability to fix, and Tony  _ had _ tried to minimize what triggers he could think of because there was footage of what the Winter Soldier did when he wasn't happy with what techs were doing with his arm, but. It hadn't been  _ all _ that he could have done at the time. 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this ended up having a lot more talking and a lot less smut than I thought it was going to have and then I lost interest orz

**Author's Note:**

> This ties into a drabble I posted on Tumblr, where the Bucky of this world gets sucked into another, set from that world's Tony's PoV, and can be found [here](http://justavengeit.tumblr.com/post/122147884978/bucky-and-clint-do-the-au-limbo-dance-aka-a).


End file.
